Another problem with the bigpond 7.2 usb modems. This time its a Vista problem.

Customer has an intel-based laptop (HP), but cannot seem to make it work.

Whats supposed to happen: plug in the usb modem, and at first, it will appears to the computer as a USB drive, and it will auto-run the install software.

What actually happens: Vista cannot detect the USB drive (so it cannot auto-run the setup application). In fact I cannot even manually copy the setup files from the USB drive.

I plug the 7.2 USB drive into my XP laptop, and it tries to run the Bigpond setup files automatically. OK, I cancel the Setup, and copy the Bigpond setup files to my own usb drive.

I plug both my USB drive, and the bigpond 7.2 USB into the Vista laptop.

I manually run the setup. It doesn’t seem to work correctly, but at least I can now go into the Control Panel -> Programs and settings … and uninstall the bigpond software correctly.

After a reboot, I can now plug in the Bigpond 7.2 USB drive, and its detected correctly. It auto-runs the setup, and before long, the bigpond software is running almost normally.

The problem now, is that the bigpond software wants to register with bigpond… fine, but after a short while, the software says that the registration failed.

I call Bigpond support, and I get some interesting solutions:

Shift-Click on the Options tab on the Bigpond Status window… This reveals a hidden diagnosis tab.

In the diagnosis tab, I tick the box that says: “signup has been completed for this device”.

I’m then told to go to the Account tab, and to enter the username (email address), and password.

After that, I can finally connect to the internet…