What is a Dongle Driver?
QUESTION
What is a dongle driver? How does this work with my Ascent security dongle?
ANSWER
The Ascent software communicates with your security dongle using a small program called a 'dongle driver'. When you plug the Ascent security dongle into your PC the Windows operating system looks for this dongle driver program and uses this to unlock the Ascent software.
If you connect the security dongle before the program prompts you to, your operating system will not be able to find the dongle driver and it will disable the security dongle - the program will be locked and unable to run. This occurs because the dongle driver program is part of the Ascent installation - if the program has not yet fully installed there is no dongle driver to be found.
If this has happened to you the following window will appear when you try to start the software.
None of the options on this window will help as the security dongle has been locked (therefore you are locked out of the software).
The solution is to uninstall then reinstall the dongle driver program (you do not need to uninstall the software). This will unlock the security dongle and allow you to successfully start the Ascent program.
The process takes just a few minutes and varies slightly with each Windows operating system - choose your operating system from the list below.
Disclaimer: Commtest does not officially support Windows 98 or ME legacy operating systems.
Note: The images used throughout these FAQs may show details that are slightly different to what you see on your PC. This is normal and will not affect your results - just follow the instructions as outlined.
FAQ ID: 13288 Last Reviewed: 28 September 2004