X10 entertainment

[Martin Howell <martin.howell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hauled out my X10 kit the other night, havn't used it for a while as we
moved house.  Didn't work, discovered the PC interface thingy was busted
(stink of burnt electronics, big blob of moltem stuff inside). Ordered a
new one, connected it up today and set to work.

Only nothing works.  The active home software that comes with it (and
which I used before for several years) doesn't come with any drivers for
the USB cable that I paid an extra tenner for, had to download some from
god knows where. Testing the interface on any port always produces a
comms failure message, so it can't see the interface.  Not only that,
the software now hogs the cpu to the extent that the machine is unusable
- tried it on two different PCs, one with XP and one with 2003 Server,
same result.  The process that eats up the cpu is called X10com32.exe.

Before I send back the interface with a snottogram attached, has anyone
any ideas on what I am doing wrong?  Or is the whole thing just a pile
of poop?

Martin