Wireless hardware control without SmartWi

[daplumber]

OK, so props to the posters here for reawakening my interest in this annoyance, I think I've finally found a work around for me at any rate.

Please note that I have a UX180P and Windows XP Pro (Original image, heavily modified). I have no idea if this applies to Vista or if there's an equivalent, someone might want to check?

Note also that I still have SmartWi installed, I just have WCULauncher.exe disabled in AutoRun and the SmartWiservice set to manual. If you're not sure how to do this, you might want to reconsider futzing with SmartWi.

On to the good stuff! The key turns out to be the tiny program:

C:\Program Files\Sony\SmartWi Connection Utility\WWANModuleUtils.exe

This is a command line only utility and the quick dump and scan along with a little experimentation have determined the following options:

/Cleanup : DON'T USE THIS! It seems to just delete the utility!
/WlanOff : Turns off the WiFi
/WlanOn : Turns on the WiFi and turns off the GC75 EDGE modem if on
/PowerOff : Turns the modem off
/WwanOnOnly : Turns on the modem BUT leaves the WiFi alone allowing you to have both enabled at once
/WaitDriverLoad : No idea what this does. Guessing that it's used to hold a startup process until the drivers are loaded during boot?
/PowerOn : Turns the modem on and the WiFi off if it's on
/Update : No idea what this does

Note that the utility doesn't give a help prompt that I could discover, nor does it give error messages for unrecognized commands. Commands appear to be case insensitive, but the above capitalization is how they appear in the binary.

The above is very fast as it's not doing SmartWi's XML, image, MFC and gods knows what else processing. A few shorcuts on the desktop to turn the hardware on and off suits me fine. I use the "WwanOnOnly" option rather than "PowerOn" for the modem just in case I feel like bridging my EDGE connection to WiFi and sharing it. Previous testing of mine has shown that the power consumed by these devices when not in use has a negligible effect on battery runtime, and certainly less than that wasted futzing with SmartWi. I do have the extended life larger battery, so I might be less sensitive than if I were using the regular one.

James

[Benz145]

Nice find, I will sticky this, but could you please try to give it a little bit of fomatting? What I mean is maybe giving some titles to the sections with actual important information so they are separate from the other info above. Nice work, I hope some people find this handy. I will post a link to this in the "SmatWi Bad Memory Leak" thread, hopefully all of those people having trouble with SmartWi can use this method instead!

Oh also, you if you can remove "Can we make this a sticky please?" that would be good, as the thread is now stuck : )

[daplumber]

OK, removed the sticky request. Feel free to reformat and post as a FAQ, Wiki or whatever. I trust you to attribute to the various people on the thread as appropriate.

Formatting is not exactly my strength and I'm a little swamped at the moment, but I thought I'd share.

James

[MrMuzz]

On Vista w/ the latest smartwi entering the commands with the switches does not work, it does return an error of "hardware not found"

If you might be able to dissect my exe I'd love to test, I'd like to bridge my edge for ad-hoc w/ my PSP!!!! Woooo

[daplumber]

List the contents of the SmartWi directory under Vista and I'll see if anything suggests itself. However if you don't have a hex editor just open any .exe's in Wordpad and see if any obvious command strings present themselves.

James

[rhotic]

Any help with Vista is appreciated. This isn't pretty...

I don't know if there is this close relationship between the Cingular activation and Smartwi on the XP version...

C:\Program Files\Sony\Smartwi connection Utility\
..\Activation - Cingular
..\EFlyer
..\Generic
..\image
..\images
..\localization
..\Plugins
..\xaml
...there're 92 items in this folder. Maybe I'll just list the exe.'s
ActivationManager.exe
CCP.exe
getimei.exe
InstallUtils.exe
Powermanager.exe
Smartwi.exe
SmartWifirstBootUtility.exe
SmartWiHelper.exe
SmartWiHelperPlus.exe
SmartWiTogglet.exe
SmartWiToggletProxy.exe
SmartWiWlanhelper.exe
SWGadgetServer.exe
ThirdPartyAppMgr.exe
WWANModuleutils.exe



...with Vista, there is no Smartwi service, that I can see. I cannot yet identify any service that might be the same by another name. Also the startups are different. There is no WCULauncher.

There is only "smartwihelper.exe /windowsstartup" in the startups and "cingularccm.exe -a". Neither of them stay in memory but other processes that you see in the directory are there after startup. Other than this, (and the mystery service) I cannot tell how these smartwi-related apps get launched, such as the following...

I have checked this out with ProcessExplorer...

CCP.exe is the top of the process tree for Activation Manager.exe, PowerManager.exe, Thirdpartyappmgr.exe, and SWGadgetserver.exe.
Also, SmartWiTogglet.exe and SmartWiToggletProxy.exe are in memory. These are all in memory when the wireless switch is off. When the wireless switch is on, all the above stay in memory, and only 1 other process is launched... Smartwi.exe (which is managed under powermanger.exe).

It seems like all these things are closely related in Vista. I shut down powermanager.exe, the WWAN no longer functions. (I was testing that, at the time I noticed this. I actually don't know whether the WLAN would stop functioning, but with the process relationship above, it probably would.) I actually removed the Cingular client and the WWAN Sony EDGE module disappeared. (Had to reinstall it.) I wanted to try out a different communication manager, because I'm not on Cingular.

That's the best I can do for now. I've only had this thing 4 days. I hope this wasn't a waste of time for anyone, and we can move this thing to a different forum, you all want, but it would be nice if we could collaborate on doing something for the Vista folk. This PC is awesome and fast, if all this wireless stuff is shut down, but wireless is one of my primary uses.

[daplumber]

OhhhKay! There's a lot here, and I don't have the system in front of me or the time to futz with this after tonight, so here's my scattered thoughts:

The modem drivers and the Cingular client are tied together. Under XP it's possible to install just the drivers, but it was a bit pointless as only the Cingular Client worked. I'm happily using an unlocked modem and a T-Mobile SIM with the Cingular client. The modem seems to be UX specific, I haven't found any other drivers that worked.

There are some differences in the file list from my XP version which is hardly surprising, but there seems to be quite a lot in common too.

The startups are probably of the "run it and see if the hardware's there otherwise exit" variety.

It's odd that WWANModuleutils is still there. Maybe try killing everything WAN and WWAN related and see if it suddenly works?

I'd also suggest opening SmartWiWlanhelper.exe SWGadgetServer.exe SmartWiHelper.exe SmartWiHelperPlus.exe in a text editor and see if anything leaps out. Right click them in file explorer and select "properties" and see if there are any clues there.

The whole SmartWi stack seems to be built out of some kind of bloated XML/MFC framework with the bare minimum of "real" low level coding which is what you're looking for.

Happy Hacking!

James

[rhotic]

bit of a digression, but question... if you are using the CCM with T-Mobile, how are you getting around the fact that CCM tries to call home every 30 days, and if it can't, it doesn't work? ...or is that just on the Vista version?

The other stuff, I'll have to try later...

[MrMuzz]

In Vista you're correct on powermanager. Activation.exe can be excluded but I'm not sure what triggers it's execution, not in any startup items. smartwitogglet and smartwitoggletproxy
in conjunction with powermanager seem to be closely related to one another and completely necessary, this could prove to be wrong. ccm is a mystery to me, and why does the cingularconnection exe kick off 3rdparty manager even when it's disabled in the app? That is useless unless you use it as an option.If I have time today I'll bang on it. Between us all we'll get thing resolved sorry if the post is sloppy I'm thumbing it right now

[Intradev]

I mentioned in another post that I noticed when using the Cingular firmware update utility I hadn't had SmartWi installed (it wasn't officialy available for 280) but the utility had the ability to power on the WWAN. This is the util that is called during that update. So far: smartwihelper2 /WWLANPowerOn turns it on (and knocks out the WLAN). smartwihelper2 /WWLANPoweroff turns it off (and doesn't restore WLAN unfortunately.) Additionally I installed the Wireless Switch Utility from the 380 and if I toggle the 2.4 checkbox WLAN is reactivated. I know this is not really a solution but I notice a DRAMATIC improvement in Vista usability not having SmartWi installed.