failed to open device: DLL Initialize error: Imon.dll

jumpman · Post by **jumpman** » February 29th, 2008, 11:08 pm

Hello, I have the zalman HD 160 plus with his imon lcd.
In lcd smartie 5.4, lcd size, I choose 2x16. I choose too Imon.dll, but I have this message: "failed to open device: DLL Initialize error: Imon.dll: display no found".
Have you an idea please?

Theydon Bois · Post by **Theydon Bois** » March 18th, 2008, 3:22 pm

I'd also like to know this.......

Post by **caesar** » March 18th, 2008, 4:28 pm

Please edit your posts and write more information about your operating system, .NET version installed, zalman/imon versions etc.

If nobody knows what you have there, nobody can help you!

Theydon Bois · Post by **Theydon Bois** » March 18th, 2008, 4:38 pm

Apologies.

I have a Zalman HD160+ Case, with the latest iMon/Soundgraph software installed (from Soundgraph, not zalmans website.)

I have Vista installed with SP1, and not sure off the top of my head if .net 2 is already installed - I will check tonight when I get home.

I have LCDSmartie installed, and have tried various display options, but think from reading the boards its the imon.dll that I should be using, and when I do, I get the same error as the OP.

I also read that in Device manager, you should be able to see IRTrans under the USB? I can see nothing about anytype of USB LCD device, and so will check if my connection is on correctly - I do however get time, date and news information if I select various settings for Front view within the iMon software.

Post by **caesar** » March 18th, 2008, 4:58 pm

Could you try to follow the actions from this post?
http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic. ... 3244#13244

The driver used is this one: http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic. ... 2766#12766

Hope this is of any help until someone with your hardware sees this post.

Theydon Bois · Post by **Theydon Bois** » March 18th, 2008, 8:12 pm

.net version 2 is already installed on my PC. I then followed the instruction per the thread listed.

- Dropped iMON-OEM_LCD.dll in the 'displays' subfolder of lcdsmartie folder

- Copied SG_VFD.dll from the Soundgraph folder folder to the lcdsmartie root folder

- Ran LCDSmartie, and chose iMON_OEM_LCD.dll as my display plugin, leaving the parameters empty, which caused an error message to appear.

- Choose 1x16 as my display screen size, and clicked 'apply'

- Shut down the PC, disconnect the power-cord (to shut down the LCD), and disconnected the USB of the LCD

- Restarted Windows, pluged in the USB of the lcd. Vista bingbong'd, and the display started to display Windows System Information as normal.

- Started LCDSmartie, and it "Failed to open device DLL initialize error, iMON_OEM_LCD.dll Unable to initialize the display, display hardware not found."

The imon software has an option to use 3rd party tools, but basically indicates it wont work if this is selected. Sure enough, if you select this, the LCD 'shuts down' and shows just the time. It has the side effect of stopping the Zalman MCE remote from working as well, and LCDSmartie still gives the same error if you start it once more.

My device manager settings also do not indicate anything other than USB Root HUb x 7, USB composite Device x 2, and USB Universal Host controller x 7.

Please help obiwan kenobi, your my only hope....

Theydon Bois · Post by **Theydon Bois** » March 18th, 2008, 8:24 pm

I missed the bit about stopping the software from loading at start-up, so removed imon from startup and rebooted, and still got the same message.

I also copied the sg_vfd.dll file into the display folder, and again got the same message.

ryanmc · Post by **ryanmc** » March 18th, 2008, 10:23 pm

i had an imon display and had to install the imon software and then choose allow third party plugin or something like that dont know if the same applies for you. also had to use imond.dll plugin with parameter 6

Theydon Bois · Post by **Theydon Bois** » March 25th, 2008, 1:07 am

Tried the above posters suggestion, and it did the same thing (Failed to open:...) showing IMOND.dll instead.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Tide · Post by **Tide** » March 28th, 2008, 7:39 am

I have a Silverstone GD01-MDX with a LCD not VFD display like the one described in this article.

http://imonapi.tripod.com/

I have tired the 2 imon files included with lcd smartie as well as the imon_OEM version. I have followed teh directions on each and have not been able to get any to work.

I get the same error as the rest "Failed to open device DLL initialize error, iMON_OEM_LCD.dll Unable to initialize the display, display hardware not found."

jptheripper · Post by **jptheripper** » March 30th, 2008, 6:00 pm

im in the same boat, someone please help us here!

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » April 7th, 2008, 10:27 pm

Yet another one here struggling with the same issue. I'm wondering are we all having a new HW unit version that doesn't work with the dll drivers coming with LCD Smartie?

I have Antec Fusion V2 case that I bought last June. The VFD unit made by Soundgraph had freezing problems and garbage characters appearing to the display. I had LCD Smartie installed and it worked whenever the display itself managed to start, but Antec replaced the original VFD unit when I complained about my problems. This new VFD unit seems to work fine with the iMon SW, but I get the same error messages as described above in earlier posts with LCD Smartie.

There's not much use for the display if I have to satisfy using the manufacturer's SW because it's so limited (well, I can use IR to turn the PC on and off - that's something).

Edit 15Apr2008:
Just adding some information here about my case if it helps someone to find an answer. I'm using Vista Home Premium and Smartie v5.4 (also tried 5.4.1 exe). I had the same iMon SW and Smartie versions installed when I successfully managed to use Smartie with the older VFD unit. When I sent the unit for replacement and there was a period when I had no display unit at all I got the same "display not found" error message which I ignored because there really wasn't one installed. After installing the replacement unit that error message stayed even though the unit now works with iMon SW (using FrontView setup).

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » July 27th, 2008, 10:03 pm

Still haven't been able to find a solution to my (or our) problem. However, I was just reading an interesting discussion in plugin announcements thread about a problem that iMon HW was not found.

http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic. ... 0&start=15

Could this give a clue what's wrong? Does the standard LCD smartie plugin also excpect that iMon HW reports itself with a certain byte and has that indication changed with some later HW variant. I checked the registry key mentioned in refered discussion and for my iMon unit it is 1A. Could someone, please, who is able to use LCD smartie with iMon VFD unit HW check what's the value in the registry.

My own technical understanding is not sufficient to solve this, but perhaps someone else can.

Post by **caesar** » August 5th, 2008, 12:03 am

Ok, after reading all info you liked to I came to the conclusion that the address the driver talks to has changed, so I compiled a display driver with 1A as you indicated.

Please report back if it works, so I can try to implement a more convenient configuration solution.

http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/imond-1A.dll

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » August 5th, 2008, 6:01 pm

Thanks for your effort. I copied your dll to LCD Smartie's dsiplays folder and selected it from the setup. Sorry to say but this edited display dll didn't seem to help. Works exactly as before as explained earlier in this thread. I don't know if this help, but here's the content of my iMon registry values.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SOUNDGRAPH\iMON]
"CurRemote"="MCE remote"
"BrwsPath"="C:\\Windows\\System32\\"
"CityInfo"="1.2.4"
"DIS"=dword:00000000
"FeedInfo"="1.0.1"
"InitialDone"=dword:00000001
"RCPlugin"=dword:00000001
"Run7Front"=dword:00000001
"SNDNG"=dword:00000000
"SNDOK"=dword:00000001
"TrayStart"=dword:00000001
"VFDPlugin"=dword:00000001
"WA"=dword:00000001
"Account"=dword:00000001
"Net"=dword:00000001
"ExANTEC"=dword:00000001
"VFD"=dword:0000001a
"OriginalFocus"=dword:00000000
"Alarm"=""
"WakeupMode"=dword:00000000
"RunFront"=dword:00000002
"RC6"=dword:00000001
"AO"=dword:00000001
"LastVFD"=dword:0000001a
"DISOPT"=dword:00000000
"MOUSEVEL"=dword:00001388
"MOUSEACC"=dword:000002bc
"PNTSPD"=dword:00001b58
"KEYREINPUT"=dword:00000001
"KEYREPEAT"=dword:00000005
"RUNALARM"=dword:00000001
"EXCAPP"=dword:00000002
"WAV_OK"="<Default Sound>"
"WAV_NG"="<Default Sound>"
"WAV_ALARM"="<Default Sound>"
"EXCAPPNAME"="iMEDIAN HD"
"CHKVER"=dword:00000001
"PlaybackEndpt"="{0.0.0.00000000}.{0f8c9ffa-0356-4946-84a9-e26c5d0aaf6b}"
"MixerDevice"=dword:00000000
"MixerLine"=dword:00000000
"MouseMode"=dword:00000001
"IndicatorSize"=dword:00000003
"VolumeStep"=dword:00000002
"RFResponse"=dword:00000005
"ODD"=dword:00000000
"IR_Porcess"=dword:00000001
"AutoiMEDIAN"=dword:00000000
"VFDUpperLine"="Antec HTPC"
"VFDLowerLine"=""

Post by **caesar** » August 5th, 2008, 9:52 pm

I know nothing about these displays nor how to send commands to them. If you have some proper documentation, I could take a look and try to make a proper driver but you will need to gather some useful documentation first.

Datasheets, command sets, other open source projects that use these displays (even on linux), anything that can talk to these displays is ok.

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » August 9th, 2008, 2:48 pm

Well, how about this manufacturer's API document?

http://www.soundgraph.com/Eng_/Supports ... archString

I know that Media Portal has also drivers written for SoundGraph VFD unit, but I have tried playing with Media Portal and so far haven't been able to make it display anything on my VFD.

This is so strange because I had my original VFD unit working with LCD Smartie just fine until I had to replace it. I have read similar reports from other discussion forums so perhaps there is some different version of the unit in the market. The new unit looks exactly as the original one.

Post by **caesar** » August 9th, 2008, 8:37 pm

Will look into it these days. Stay tuned!

iseppi · Post by **iseppi** » August 11th, 2008, 8:18 pm

I have the same problem since the update to IMON version 7.40.0806. It seems to work OK if I start lcdsmarite before I start the IMON Manager. The other way round i get the imond.dll error.

On previous Versions of IMON it was working OK. Maybe i should revert to the old IMON version and try again...

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » August 12th, 2008, 8:04 pm

I too have the latest iMON/iMedian SW and drivers nowadays. When my problem started I had older SW and drivers but I didn't change the SW version when I replaced th VFD unit (my problem started after replacing the VFD). The trick iseppi used to make VFD work (changing the starting order) didn't seem to help in my case. Perhaps I should completely remove iMon/iMedian and try with the original Antec provided iMon drivers (but I suppose then I couldn't use the latest iMedian HD replacement of Media Center).

Post by **caesar** » August 14th, 2008, 12:21 pm

Please try the following archive: http://czi.uni.cc/LCDSmartie/imon.zip

Extract both dll files into the display plugin folder and setup smartie to use imon display driver.
you don't need to set a path in the startup parameter box if you extract both files to the display plugin folder.

I really hope this helps you.

Wexu · Post by **Wexu** » August 17th, 2008, 11:08 pm

Once again thanks for your efforts caesar. However, the result was the same as with all earlier tries to fix this problem

I even tried uninstalling all Soundgraph iMon SW and removed manually all registry entries and folders of Soundgraph and Antec drivers. Then rebooted the PC and installed first older Antec provided drivers (played with them awhile - no change) and then went back to the newer drivers downloaded from Soundgraph and the situation remained the same.

I'd assume that there were more people with the same problem asking around for help. I've seen some, but not that many considering that this case is quite popular. Well, maybe 99% are happy with iMon SW possibilities for displaying something on the VFD. It might also be that older units don't have this problem (like it was in my case) and neither LCD versions. CPU temps and fan speeds would have been nice and also getting the display to show something with e.g. Media Portal.

Thanks anyway.

Post by **caesar** » August 18th, 2008, 6:32 am

Sorry to hear it didn't work.
In my previous post I used the sg_vfd and API's you provided in the link.

Wexu wrote:Well, how about this manufacturer's API document?

http://www.soundgraph.com/Eng_/Supports ... archString

Seems that they changed much on the display and never bothered to update the API's. If they update them, I will be able to code a driver for the new displays.

slekvak · Post by **slekvak** » January 8th, 2009, 12:20 am

I have the same problem. Display is never found. I got a Chieftec HM-03 with a Soundgraph iMON VFD. Any news on this?

Dave H · Post by **Dave H** » March 26th, 2009, 5:57 pm

I have the same issue as well

running latest LCD Smartie and Imon with the Antec Fusion Remote Max case

Also, judging by this link it seems like they don't know if/when they will release a newer API

failed to open device: DLL Initialize error: Imon.dll

failed to open device: DLL Initialize error: Imon.dll

Same error