How to Configure a Direct Serial Connection in TMS on XP Mode Virtual Machine

Goals and Symptoms

TMS 1.5 supports the following operating systems

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP3 and later
Microsoft Vista Ultimate SU1
Microsoft Vista Business SU1

TMSCE 2.5 supports the following operating systems

Microsoft® Windows® Vista Ultimate SP1
Microsoft Windows Vista Business SP1
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 or higher
Microsoft Server 2003 Standard SP2 or higher


Since these operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft it is common to see TMS installed on an XP Mode Virtual Machine that is running on a Windows 7 PC.
After properly configuring meters on a direct serial connection you may notice that TMS is unable to communicate with the meters.

Causes and Fixes

Cause
The COM ports in an XP Mode Virtual Machine on a Windows 7 PC are not linked up the the PC's physical COM ports by default.

Fix
The following instructions are from a Windows 7 help topic at the following link.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee449417(WS.10).aspx

To configure a COM port for a virtual machine

• 1. Open the settings for the virtual machine. Do one of the following:
  • • • In the Virtual Machines folder, right-click the name of the virtual machine, and then click Settings.
      • From the virtual machine window, click the Tools menu, and then click Settings.
  2. In the left pane of the Windows Virtual PC Settings page, click the name of an available COM port. For example, COM 1.
  3. In the right pane, select the type of connection you want to make and provide the additional details. For example, specify the full path and name for the named pipe or text file.
  4. Click OK to save the change.

When setting up the XP Mode Virtual Machine such that TMS can access the external COM port you will need to select the COM port used by TMS in step 2 and Physical Serial Port on step 3 and choose the serial port that the meters are physically connected to.