[Hardware Hacking General] E:V:A:
Huawei, Windows Drivers & COM ports...

First Connections

Connecting your E589 to a windows box, for the first time, will enumerate a couple of (possibly old default windows) drivers. This of course depends on what you have installed and used before. As I have never used any Huawei device before, all I got was something like this. "Something", because I don't remember exactly what was there, since I tried to use the DC-Unlocker Client to get some device info.

Initially the only thing I could see in the windows Device Manager was this:

[SIZE=2]DeviceType VID:PID Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------
USB Mass Storage Device 12d1:1f01 Router SD card slot
[/SIZE]

However, when using DC-Unlocker Client to find the modem, it seem to find and/or install its own drivers and ended up enlist the following, as shown

in Device Manager under "Ports (COM/LPT)" as:

[SIZE=2]Device Name VID:PID SYS INF Ver Date
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FC - Application Interface 12d1:1442 FcSerial.sys oem214.inf 2.0.6.705 1/17/2012
FC - PC UI Interface 12d1:1442 FcSerial.sys oem214.inf 2.0.6.705 1/17/2012
G:\ wpdfs.inf 6.0.6002.18112 6/21/2006
Huawei SD Storage? 12d1:1f01 disk.sys wpdfs.inf 6.0.6002.18005 6/21/2006
[/SIZE]

This is much better, but not at all satisfying. So I proceeded to install the proper Huawei Device Drivers (see HackPack). After rebooting machine (and/or selecting the drivers when asked), I got these:

[SIZE=2]Device Name VID:PID INF InfSec Ver Date
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Modem 12d1:1001 oem204.inf Modem0.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Application Interface 12d1:1001 oem203.inf QportInstall00.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G PC UI Interface 12d1:1001 oem203.inf QportInstall01.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013
[/SIZE]

What happened to my SD card and storage device!? Nobody knows, but enabling the hidden view in Device Manager, eventually helped... Doing some studying of the Huawei AT command set led me to connecting to the modem via terminal (Putty) and issue the following AT commands:

at^sfm=1
at^setport="FF;1,2,3,A2"

Disconnect, and reboot router, and reconnect. BAM! There they are:

[SIZE=2]Device Name Drive VID:PID SYS INF InfSec Ver Date
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Modem 12d1:1413 modem.sys oem204.inf Modem0.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_00 \6&39cbb52c&0& 0000
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Network Card 12d1:1413 ewusbnet.sys oem205.inf qcwwan.ndi 1.0.4.017 2/17/2013 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_01 \6&39cbb52c&0& 0001
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Application Interface 12d1:1413 ewusbmdm.sys oem203.inf QportInstall00.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_02 \6&39cbb52c&0& 0002
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G PC UI Interface 12d1:1413 ewusbmdm.sys oem203.inf QportInstall01.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_03 \6&39cbb52c&0& 0003
HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G GPS Interface 12d1:1413 ewusbmdm.sys oem203.inf QportInstall01.NT 2.0.6.720 3/19/2013 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_04 \6&39cbb52c&0& 0004
HUAWEI Mass Storage USB Device G: 12d1:1413 USBSTOR.SYS 6.0.6002.18005 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_05\6 &39cbb52c&0& 0005
HUAWEI SD Storage USB Device H: 12d1:1413 USBSTOR.SYS 6.0.6002.18005 USB\VID_12D1&PID_1413& MI_06\6 &39cbb52c&0& 0006
[/SIZE]

9 new drivers and they smell fresh! The info above was obtained by playing around with the USBDeview (from HackPack). Very useful when you have USB driver issues. We can also list the available ports by issuing the following AT command:

[SIZE=2]at^getportmode
^GETPORTMODE:TYPE:WCDMA:Qualcomm,MDM:0,NDIS:1,DIAG:2,PCUI:3,GPS:4,CDROM:5,SD:6
[/SIZE]

Tracking Down Windows Driver Issues

The best way to resolve windows device/driver issues is to first being able to see what drivers are already installed and available. Problem is that windows defaults to hiding drivers not used. We will need to remedy this. in order to remove faulty drivers.

There are 3 ways to list hidden devices in device manager.

(a) Set a permanent environment variable.

(b) Use a temporary environment variable in a command shell and

open Device Manager from within that shell.

(c) Make a simple permanent change to your registry.

The best way (from HERE) is (c) :

Open Registry Editor.

In Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

Create the following value (DWORD):

devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices

Change it's value to 1. Close Regedit.

Kill and restart Windows Explorer or just reboot.

But if you want to try this first, use (b):

Open a command window.

Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" without the quotes at the command line then press enter.

Type "devmgmt.msc" without the quotes at the command line then press enter.

Under the "View" menu click on "Show hidden devices".

Navigate to "Ports (COM & LPT)" and there should be many more devices listed and can be removed with a simple right click uninstall.

Some of the Nirsoft tools in the HackPack can do some of this automatically...

You'll be surprised how much driver junk you will find in your machine after only a year...

Too Many COM Ports

It's quite annoying that every time you change USB port on your Windows box, the Device Manager insists on re-installing the drivers for that device and give them a new COM port! You'll endup having several dozens of COM ports in a short time. The very small and nice FTDI utility in the HackPack allow you to easily re-assign the COM ports to where ever you like. And you can use some of the other utilities to remove device drivers that are using old/other COM ports.