I realize this has probably been hashed to death. I like windows 7 better except for one problem. If the machine sits idle for too long early in the day, mach3 stops communicating with the B.O.B. or it looses the charge pump or something like that.  (parallel ports) I have several machines with win7 and they all do it. Of course i've disabled the screensaver, sleep function and all that stuff but they all still do this if they sit too long. If they keep running parts all morning, they are fine. Windows xp doesn't have this problem but it is getting more difficult to load xp on newer computers with solid state drives. I've read that it is related to mach3's parallel port driver but no one has solved it. Can anyone shed some light on this. Are there earlier versions of mach3 that do not do this?

Hi,
I have a little dual core Atom mini-ITX single board PC for my machine. When I first got it I was using two parallel ports
and had the same problem you've described. I did find a solution but its now about 5-6 years ago and I've forgotten just what it is.

I'm thinking that if the parallelport card is on a PCI slot and I think the PCI bus has a power saving/sleep setting....

Craig

My ports are on pci/pcie slots. I have not found power saving/sleep setting for the pci bus. Is it in bios or operating system. I would love to figure this out. I prefer windows 7 over xp.

Hi,
I have been scanning through my Windows 7 PC looking for the same setting but haven't found it yet. I recall that prior to me
fitting good home switches it was necessary for me to complete a job in one session because I could not walk away overnight
otherwise Mach would shut down. I did cure that...eventually. After fitting home switches it didn't matter anyway so I forgot about it.

I'll keep looking.

Craig

Watching;
olf20 / Bob

Maybe you were thinking about PCI express link state power management. I have it turned off on all my pc's

Back when there was a function formerly known as the search feature, i've spent hours searching and reading but never figured this out.

Hi,
maybe I was but my PC had one built in port and another on a PCI card, I've never had a PCIe card fitted. Maybe its my confusion,
as I say it was a few years ago.

Craig

Hi,
maybe try the Processor Power settings per the attached.

Craig

In Win10 there is a setting for many devices that basically lets the computer turn off this device to save power. IIRC there is a similar setting in Win7 but I don't have a Win7 computer near me to look for it.

If you want to take a look, go into device manager, device properties, power saving, then uncheck the box for let the computer turn this device to save power.

HTH

Mike