Virtual Ports

Bome Products
1

Greetings,

I am evaluating MIDI Translator Pro. For the most part, the program is very impressive. It is complex, but I believe there is a reward here for climbing the learning curve. However, there is an issue I would like to get to the bottom of.

I installed the program yesterday, then created and routed, the virtual ports. I then uninstalled Bome and installed another port driver/interface combination to test. It didn't take long for me to decide to uninstall the driver and router; and reinstalled Bome. After installing and creating the ports, I got warnings that the ports would not open. Here is a link to the files on OneDrive:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqnmatYsTMoHhagx6nQo3oDeiWuyJw?e=28jvqj

The files show Device Manager, The setup in the UI and the error messages in the program.

Looking in Device Manager, I saw, as the picture shows, that the ports were not functional. The previous virtual port driver was still in Device Manager, but it was not functional either (leftover after uninstall). I removed what was left of the old driver and then proceeded to manually install drivers for each of the nine Bome virtual ports, using the Wizard in Device Manager. That took care of the situation and the virtual ports were functional.

I decided to start fresh and reinstall. While I was in Device Manger, I attempted to uninstall a Bome virtual port. Device Manager became non-responsive and I had to hit the power button to get windows to shut down. After restarting the machine, I couldn't get past the POST welcome screen. Fortunately, I do daily backups, so I was able to recover the machine.

I rebooted into windows and reinstalled Bome. I got the same issue with the virtual ports not having drivers installed. The issue recreated itself exactly. The dead drivers for the other product I tested were gone. Having removed them earlier, they didn't sneak back in. I haven't manually installed drivers for all the ports yet, as I did the first time. I wanted to get some guidance here before going ahead. And I certainly didn't try to uninstall any of the virtual ports again.

I don't mind having to install the ports manually. As a matter of fact, if you can tell me where the necessary inf, cat, etc files are, I will just do a custom install without the virtual driver. I could then install the driver for each port after creating them in Bome. I'm sure that's not ideal, but it will probably work.

My concern is the possibility of having my machine trashed again. Here is some information re my setup:

-latest demo version of Bome

-Windows 10 version 1909 (18363.719)

-Dell XPS 15 Model 9550 32GB ram

The machine checked the hardware after several attempts to get past the POST. This was before I recovered the OS and there were no errors found.

I would very much like to get this sorted out so that I can purchase the software. I believe it is unique in its segment. Seems there is very little it can't do. But stability is of prime importance.

Your help and guidance will be appreciated,

Graham

 

2

Hi,

The error you are most likely seeing is that there is another MIDI program trying to open the same MIDI port that you are trying to open in MT Pro. This is not possible on Windows.  Only one program can access to a given MIDI port (virtual or otherwise).

This is one of the reasons, Bome uses virtual ports.  We can open an existing hardware port on input and set up routing to multiple virtual ports on the output so multiple programs can access the same copy of the MIDI stream on their own virtual port.

In this fashion MT Pro acts as a MIDI splitter.

You can also open multiple input ports and route them to a single virtual MIDI output port, consolidating a MIDI stream from multiple devices and feed them all to one application.

 

In this fashion MT Pro acts as a MIDI merger.

You should never have to install/deinstall Bome Virtual ports at the operating system level. You can do that under Menu View Setting Virtual MIDI ports and assign 0 to 9 ports which will automatically handle the interface with Windows.

As far as changing configurations around on your PC.  It is good practice in your Bome MIDI Translator Pro project file to use "Aliases" rather than real ports and assign them to the ports you currently want to use in your project.

That way later if you change your host configuration around you can simply go to the Menu MIDI-Edit Project Port aliases, and re-assign them to the real ports that the host platform is using.

Below is a tutorial video on the use of aliases.

 

https://youtu.be/CrE391VJL0s

 

I hope this clears things up. In a nutshell, you should never need to go to Device Manager to install and uninstall Bome Virtual ports. Do thiw within the MT Pro application itself.

 

Steve Caldwell
Bome Q and A Moderator and
Independent Bome Consultant/Specialist
bome@sniz.biz

3

Thanks Steve,

There are no other MIDI drivers left on the machine that I'm aware of, other than my audio interface (Focusrite 18i8) and two keyboards. Both of them use native Windows drivers. I did try several other MIDI solutions before setting them aside and focusing on your product.

I uninstalled the other product and deleted everything else I could find associated with the items. If there's still something there, where else can I look to get rid of it?

I will watch that video you suggested.

Please let me know. Thanks,

Graham

4

Any DAW is going to look for a MIDI interface. Open any DAW or MIDI enabled application or MT Pro and see what MIDI ports are shown. If possible post a screen shot.

5

Hey Steve,

I had just updated to the latest Windows build yesterday (KB4540673). I read that some folks were having issues after installing that cumulative update. I went in and uninstalled the update and restarted the machine. Looked in Device Manger and all of the virtual ports moved from other devices (no driver installed) to Sound Video and Game Controllers, where they belong. I am able to open the ports and the error messages are gone from the UI.

I should point out that before rolling back the update, I was able to manually install the correct driver into each virtual port; one at a time. So it seems something was preventing the driver from being automatically installed into the virtual ports.

Perhaps this will be of some use to others who may be experiencing the same issue.

Thanks,

Graham

6

OK, I’ll keep an eye out. How did you install the driver for the virtual ports? The drivers should be there already with MT Pro or so I thought.

7

Before rolling back the windows update, the 9 virtual ports were listed as ‘other devices’. I opened the property page and message was no driver installed. I opened the driver tab, clicked update driver > Browse my computer. The files were there in ProgramData. After the update, I guess something changed and prevented them from installing automatically.

8

The are listed in both Software devices and Sound, video and game controllers on my system. In software devices, they show “This device is working properly”. Dirver is Microsoft Windows Driver Date 6/21/2006. If you click driver details it says. No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device. Under Sound, video and game devices it also says working properly Manufacturer Bome Software GmbH &Co. KG. Date 5/16/2018 Driver version 2.1.0.44.

Again, you should never need to go here for any Bome Virtual Device changes.

9

Thanks Steve. I’m just a guy trying to get a handle on your excellent software. I can’t use it seriously until I’m sure I won’t crap out. I think I know the answer to that now. It’s a Windows issue, brought on by this week’s update; at least at my end. I agree that I shouldn’t have to install drivers for the ports. But before I rolled back the Windows update, the ports were listed as other devices and there was no communication in or out of those ports until I manually installed the driver into each one individually. I uninstalled/reinstalled Bome, and it was the same issue. Then, when I uninstalled the update, and rebooted, the virtual ports were immediately and automatically functional. I’m just going to try a couple more things with the software and probably make the purchase shortly. Thanks for helping me work through this.

10

Gotcha. Hopefully the problems are behind you. What other software did you try that may have messed things up? The only software I ever had to de-install was CopperLan which insisted on taking control of all MIDI ports.

11

CopperLan, loopMIDI and just before reinstalling bome, loopBE30. At first I thought the conflict was with loopBE30, but now I’m pretty sure it was the Windows update. Also, I’m not sure what trashed my system. Trying to uninstall your driver in Device Manager or the update. Could be an issue for other customers updating to the latest build of Windows. Thanks

12

LoopBe and loopMIDI are friendly. CopperLan wants exclusive access of all MIDI ports so you have to shut down the service or de-install it for it to work with other products. Then you have to use CopperLan manager to put all MIDI through their ports. Once I de-installed CopperLan, the world came back to order.

13

In general, there are very few issues with the virtual MIDI driver.

Some words of caution:

  • The Bome virtual MIDI driver has a unique design to make it very dynamic. This design makes it hard to use the device manager for adding/removing ports. The driver tries to react as sensible as possible, but the outcome will usually not be what the user wants to achieve.
  • Therefore, as a general rule, never use the Device Manager to manipulate the Bome Virtual MIDI driver.
  • Rather, if you have issues, use the installers:
    • The MIDI Translator Pro installer has a Custom install mode, where you can check "Force reinstalling the virtual MIDI driver". This will do a full uninstall and a complete re-install.
    • Or you can go to Windows "Programs and Features", and uninstall Bome Virtual MIDI from there. Trying to do that from Device Manager will only uninstall it partially.

Also, as you have seen, it's probably a good idea to reboot after uninstalling third-party MIDI drivers.

If there is a general conflict with a recent Windows update, we will check if we'll need to update the driver.

14

Thanks for the education. The support from Steve and yourself is most appreciated. I shouldn’t have tried to uninstall one of your virtual ports from Device Manager. I thought it would be OK, given that they were not functional, due to the fact that they were not attached to a driver; and I had uninstalled what was left of a loopBE driver which didn’t go away after the uninstall routine, without a problem. Needless to say, I won’t be doing that again :slight_smile: