I have about eight Nortel Meridian M9417 (now Aastra 9417CW) analog telephones that have a USB interface. These are nice phones that have an internal 100 number phone directory and a 100 number log of recent incoming calls by Caller-ID, plus a number of additional really useful features. Originally, Nortel provided Windows software that allowed backup and restore of the phone directory, plus other useful features as well. The software included a driver for the USB interface. Nortel sold the rights to the phone a few years ago to Aastra, which now sells the phone without the software.
The USB driver had “driver_irql_not_less_or_equal” issues (blue screen) on Windows 2000 if you put the computer in sleep mode without “ejecting” the USB cable/device first, so clearly the quality of the driver is the issue here. Nevertheless, the software is useful for copying (via backup/restore) the phone directory from one phone to the others. That means either moving each phone to the computer for this task, OR moving the computer to each phone. Both are inconvenient for regular backup/restore copying. The former is inconvenient because the phone has three cables (phone, USB, and power) to disconnect and reconnect. The latter is inconvenient for similar reasons.
So, I bought a Digi AnywhereUSB/2 and installed it on two Windows XP computers. This sort of works: I can move data from the phone to either computer, but when I move data in the reverse direction, the data is moved but Windows XP blue-screens with “driver_irql_not_less_or_equal”, naming the “AnywhereUSB” driver. Ugh.
As I said, this is really an issue with the phone’s USB driver, but I’m curious if anyone has any suggestions. I don’t see any “AnywhereUSB” options that would prove useful.
Things I have already considered:[list=1]
[li]Use a laptop to move data between phones.
[/li][li]Buy new phones that have comparable features (suggestions welcome).
[/li][/list=1]