midi ports showing but not working

OK Hi, I am completely new here sorry for just barging in when I got a problem, but I am hoping someone here can help me or point me in a direction where I could get an answer.
 
Now don't laugh, ok you can laugh, I am using Cakewalk Guitar Studio 2 from about 1999 (I am not exagerating) and I run it on my HP Pavillion laptop (midi only no audio) which is running Windows 7 -- don't ask me how I got that to work on a 64 bit computer it was quite a wrassling match and I don't remember the details.
 
Anyhow, a few weeks ago I unistalled a bunch of junk programs off of my laptop because it just wasn't performing too well.  Ever since then I can't get Cakewalk to successfully use my input/output device which is an M-Audio midisport uno 1X1
 
coinsidentally microsoft midi mapper crapped out at the same time -- so the only thing I have is GS Wavetable Synth for output and no input -- tried all kinds of things to get it to work again
 
Finally started up a copy of that free synth "Anvil Studio" and ran a test in there and it came back with "unable to start midiport: Midisport Uno, Microsoft Midimapper.
 
Anybody got an idea of what could be wrong?  Thanks! 

well thanks a lot Scook -- that seems like that is probably barking up the right tree but unfortunately it doesn't have me back up and running yet.

I did what Mr Anderton suggested in the article but it didn't reveal any "hidden drivers" -- I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled but still get the same ol' set of messages.  Seems to me it should have shown multiple instances of my M-Audio driver though because I know that it did its little installation dance every time I plugged it into a new USB port.
 
So if anybody else has any ideas, please keep them coming.  When I start cakewalk it tells me I don't have any midi devices chosen for input/output -- so I go to the dialog box and the midisport uno is there but when I choose it and click ok it comes back with the same message about how I haven't chosen a midi device.  I have uninstalled and reinstalled the driver for the M-Audio several times and that hasn't helped  : (
 

I guess I can try reformatting my laptop and starting over but I hate to do that because it is running smooth now that I have gotten rid of those programs.  Also I am not so sure that I will be able to get my archaic cakewalk to run on this pc again if I start over -- I think I was more than a little lucky to get it installed the first time.
 
I am seriously thinking about updating pretty soon.  There are a few probably obscure functions in my version of cakewalk that are important to me though.  One is a CAL file that splits midi notes (on the same channell) to separate tracks -- I use this on drums to mix or delete various percussion that is going on on different notes
 
also the stuff where you can reduce or increase velocity or other parameters like duration over a certain selection -- I use that kind of stuff -- I am guessing a shiny new Sonar would have all that right?
 
I am interested in having audio and cakewalk is the sequencer that I already know how to use so it seems Sonar would make sense -- I get the feeling that there are a lot of good products out there, probably for me the one with the most forgiving learning curve would make the most sense. 
 

Hi slartabartfast -- I still haven't got it working -- but I did find another slightly altered version of that bat file, its the same but without the slashes -- so 
 
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start Devmgmt.msc
 
and when I ran that one it again launched the device manager and this time there were some hidden devices to see and I uninstalled them but it is still not working -- I can't imagine why there would be a difference in the batfiles if they both launch the device manager they should both have the same ability to show hidden drivers I would think but I guess that just shows what I know or rather what I don't know
 
I also found some more stuff on the web about setting the default midi device in windows 7 by manipulating the registry -- I went through that and made the changes and still no success

Also found something called the dosbox that lets you have a dos box running in windows and I used it to list midi devices and it only listed
 
0 wavetable synth
1 uno 1x1 (or whateer the name of my little usb device is)
 
so judging by that it doesn't seem that there are hidden devices cluttering up my ports, unfortunately I didn't run that query until after I had deleted the hidden devices via the bat file -- I would certainly like to have seen if they were listed there before I uninstalled them.
 
I am getting pretty frustrated, I don't guess I will go too much farther before I decide to just reformat my pc and take my chances at getting Cakewalk Guitar Studio 2 installed again on windows 7

OK thanks for the info on the slashes -- and as far as midi mapper -- actually I don't know that it ever worked on this computer it is just one of the options that comes up in cakewalk guitar studio 2 when I try to select an output device -- nowadays it won't let me select it -- it just goes back to the "you don't have an output device selected" when I try to select it
 
I don't know if thats what it would do before I started having trouble with the M-audio UNO, I just remember that it was among the options but I would never choose it -- actually I don't know what midi note mapper does
 
Now one of the junk files that I uninstalled at the time when the problem ensued was an auto accompaniment program called improvisor -- some freeware version of band in a box -- I never could get it to work at all, so it is possible I guess that it had some version of midi note mapper as you are saying
 
I don't remember if midi note mapper was in my options prior to my downloading the improvisor software -- I was thinking that my old version of cakewalk just threw that up there because it was prominent when the code was written but now that I am thinking about it that doesn't quite make sense.
 
I do know that when I run the dos box thing and give the command to list midi it only returns the wavetable synth and the m-audio uno -- so I don't know if that confirms that my trouble is not hidden devices or not 
 
thanks for the help -- if the problem were a garbled midi note mapper, do you have any idea how I could try to fix it?
 
 
 
 

I installed impro-visor and that did not magically fix the problem -- but it does have a midi preferences tab and I went on there and the M-Audio shows "undefined external error" and all the others show ready to use -- maybe my M-audio usb to midi adapter has crapped out?

Alright, I installed improvisor on another machine we have here and plugged in the plug and play alesis IO2 and it shows up as "ready to use" on that PC so I am pretty sure that interface works -- so it still appears that i have a windows/PC problem -- I sure hate to go through a reformat -- gonna put that off a while longer I think

thanks so much Slartabartfast -- a lot of that I have tried -- I have uninstalled and reinstalled the UNO driver several times but I have used 6.1.3 am I missing something?  Is that one not right for me?
 
The other problem I have is I cant uninstall cakewalk -- when I try it says such and such of file cant be found by the unistaller  -- I'm not gonna do a reformat any time soon, when I can I will try midiox -- a rollerskating mishap landed me in the emergency room last night with a dislocated elbow along with other torn up stuff in there -- so for the moment I am kind of dead in the water and typing one handed  - thanks abunch for the help

I forgot to say that yes my usb mouse works in all 3 usb inputs
 
This is a really archaic version of cakewalk from circa 1999, I have tried reinstalling it on top of the old installation but it comes to the point where it says installshield is trying to do something and then it disappears a couple minutes later.
 
I left a slip of paper with notes in the jewel case telling how I finally got it installed the first time -- gotta run as administrator in compatibility mode for windows 98 -- then when it says its gonna reboot to complete the installation you choose no and it goes to the cd key registry stuff then you reboot it later  -- if you let it reboot when it wants to it just comes back up smiling with nothing ging on as if the reboot was not part of any installation.
 
I realize this is ridiculously old and I will have to update, but I get the feeling that no midi is going to work via usb right now which seems to point back to the original suggestion that hidden devices have crowded out the midi ports  - maybe I uninstalled them wrong  -- and what about this default midi device stuff?  Could that possibly help me if I could get the midi uno designated as the default device?

It seems more likely that your old software is not able to connect to a contemporary MIDI device in a new OS than that the MIDI device is not working in Windows 7. That is the point of trying to use another application to test it. If MidiOx can interact with it, you can stop worrying about a problem with Windows and MIDI or your MIDI interface. The only way that hidden MIDI devices would have become a problem is if you had installed a lot of MIDI devices on that same Windows installation in the past, and never deleted any of them.

so hence I think both will work but with the PC cleanup I managed to get something in Windows 7 fouled up
 

If the devices are not working, the first thing to try is to uninstall the device driver and install it again, or install a more recent version. There is very little risk in doing so except that you may end up with a device that does not work, which you already have. Just make sure you know where to find a driver to install after removing the old one.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Cc725782.aspx
 
Have you tried MidiOx?
If reinstalling the Uno driver does not work, and if you are courageous or have nothing to lose, you can explore this option:
https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/202552630-Fixing-an-Undefined-External-Error-in-MIDI-OX
The registry on my Windows 7 machine already has the UpperFilters value ksthunk, if yours does not that may be the problem.
 

Hi Pedro. Sorry for all your troubles. When you get the MIDI error have you tried going to the Windows Event Viewer and looking under Applications and see if you can get anymore info on what's going on? There might be nothing more, but there could be some more info on what's going on.

Here you go
http://www.sevenforums.co...n-use-windows-7-a.html

Here's the skinny version:
 
1. Open the Start Menu, type eventvwr.msc, and press Enter.

2. If you are logged in as an administrator and prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.

3. In the left pane, click on an event log to see it's events listed at the top of the middle pane.  Pick Windows Logs >   Applications

4. If you like, you could also right click on an event log in the left pane for more options to use. For example, to Filter Current Log or Find a specific event ID number listed in the middle pane.  Filtering is very useful.  Open that and select everything EXCEPT Information.  There are tons of information entries and most are just normal system events.  You want Errors, Warnings, Critical and Verbose.  
 
5. Identify the errors and warnings at the time-stamp for when your error occurred and double-click the event.  It will open in a pop-up window, which will have more detail.  There are Up and Down arrows that will let you scroll through the next or previous events without leaving the detail window.  There is also a Copy button so you can copy the message easily to paste into an e-mail for tech support or to post on your favorite forum!
 
 
Still check the sevenforums page - it has a lot more info and some screen caps to show you what you want to do.