APC Back-UPS CS XP Driver?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob
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B

Bob

Hi,

Does anyone know if APC Back-UPS CS have any XP native driver?

This is the unit I am looking to buy:
 
Yes and no. There are two required physical connections and a program
connection to the UPS to allow Windows to function as a control. The first
physical connection is the power supply connection and the second is either
a USB or Serial connection (depending on UPS model and it looks as if this
unit will use either) to the computer and UPS. The power feature of XP does
not natively have the ability to shut down itself due to power outage but
has to have the driver from PowerChute to interact with XP for the shutdown
upon whatever settings you have made to the UPS. The footprint in memory of
the APC driver is relatively small (less than 5 MB) and leaves an icon in
the system tray. This allows quick access to the program to change
settings. It is relatively unobtrusive.

I have more powerful units (Backup RS 1500s) on all my desktops and they
function well. All are set to shut down Windows when I have 5 minutes of
power left. APC has always stood behind their product when I had the
occasional problem (owned various units for more than 15 years now.) Even
have them on my cable box & tvs, answering machine, etc. to keep those
devices alive when power goes out. Have turned off the power outage alarms
to all except one that I use for medical equipment in the house.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for your detail explanation. I have had a few other UPS all but one
has a native XP driver which allows me to set the shutdown policy. All other
are terrible as they use some external program which does not know how to
perform hibernation.

Anyone can call ExitWindowsEx() API to shutdown. Hence now I am on the
Market to buy a replacement, I want to avoid those that use external
program. Many are written to please the vendor's accountant and they are not
even written properly for Windows. One such one is Belkin. The program is so
bad it does not even conform to Windows XP security model. I bought one only
to discover the major problem and hence returning to the shop immediately to
get my money back.

I run all my machines in LUA (Least Privilege User Account) and the program
that was supplied by Belkin did not run at all - it tried to write to
"\Program Files\...." in clear violation of the security policy.

The UPS settings in XP has sufficient support to set the shutdown policy if
suitable USB driver is available.

So it is good to hear that APC has this kind of support and it is most
likely the one to get.

Thanks.
 
Bob,

I think that APC wrote the XP battery interface software used in XP (at
least there logo is on the power options GUI). So I would think there
own software would probably get things right. However, there are some
options that can only be selected by an administrator account and that
is completely consistent with XP security policy: enabling hibernation,
selecting who and how to notify when there are power problems, and
timing before hibernation is induced.

-- Jeff Barnett
 
However, there are some options that can only be selected by an
administrator account and that is completely consistent with XP security
policy: enabling hibernation, selecting who and how to notify when there
are power problems, and timing before hibernation is induced.
Click to expand...
Fully agree otherwise there is chaos and no point having administrative
rights.

However, in many other UPS, their software ignores and fails to observe
where it can write the log files etc. It simply writes to "\Program
Files\....". LUA cannot write to that tree and its sub-tree. These programs
need to observe the Windows Security Model.

Unfortunately, often these UPS do not openly advertise their failings - I
suspect their developers are not aware of this either - and the only way to
find out is for forums like this to advertise their failings.

Like WiFi network adaptors, they can either use the Windows to configure it
(once the driver is loaded) or to use their provided software. It is the
user's choice. But in many UPS, they do not provide that choice.

Bob
 
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