"Unable to extract IO.SYS" on XP

[Goldmember]

I've been trying to get the OC IOCard to work but without result. I am using Windows XP and sioc 3.52b. I have a registered version of FSUIPC.

- When I start sioc.exe, I get the error message: Unable to extract IO.SYS. Log in as a user who had such permission.
- When I click Ok, I get the error: Privileged instruction.
- Then I click Ok and sioc starts, but no device is detected.
- I exit sioc and restart it. It starts normally without error messages. The LPT master card is detected (also the MCP and EFIS).
- I have an example sioc.ssi that sets the parking brake, but it does nothing.

I've found several posts on this subject on the Opencockpits forum, but they all concerned windows Vista. There's also a fix for that. But I am using XP. Does anybody have a solution? (I don't seem to be the first with this problem).

Tnx!

[edit] I forgot to mention that controlador.exe sees the input and lights the led that I have attached. So I'm sure the IOCard works.

[Polmer]

Hello,

It's a long shot, but I had similar issues trying to launch the application from
the zipped (compressed) file that I originally downloaded. If this is case, try extracting the compressed file to a location, then try it again.
I am also running Win XP,

Hope this makes sense.....
Regards,


~Polmer

[Goldmember]

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I unzipped the installation to a drive where I store all my downloads and installed the software from there. Three times in fact (just to be sure :-D)

[Goldmember]

I did some research meanwhile. The error message in my OP was generated when I had sioc.exe in the startup folder. When I remove it and manually start sioc.exe a while after the PC boots, the error message in the first step of my description above changes in:

- The IO.SYS service is present, but the driver cannot be connected to.

The other behaviour is the same.

When I search this error message on the internet, I find a similar problem. It seems that this is because Microsoft has changed DLL search order since Windows XP SP1 or SP2 (I have SP2). It used to search current folder first (traditional DOS behavior), but now, it searches system folder first. And since DOS/Windows has IO.sys, sioc tries to load that instead of IO.DLL. This is due to security issue raised by overriding system DLL by malatious program. If I understand this right, sioc should be fixed to load something other than IO.dll, like SiocIO.dll or something.

I'll propose this to the OC support, which is closed in weekends unfortunately. So if meanwhile somebody recognises this and has a workaround, I'd be happy to hear it.

[Goldmember]

And some more research: I simply copied io.dll from the sioc installation folder to c:\windows\system32\drivers (where io.sys sits). Problem solved. Parking brake works :-)