magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

VanguardLH · MagicJack User Joined: 04 Aug 2008 Posts: 38

I'll be navigating in my newsreader to read or write posts. Or doing some web browsing. Or editing a document. At sporadic intervals, I'll hear the PnP sound event (beep-boop) telling me that a PnP device has been unplugged. A few seconds later, I'll hear the PnP discover event (boop-beep) telling me that a new PnP device has been found. Then the magicJack splash window appears following by the "loading" progress bar. MagicJack has unloaded and reloaded.

Maybe this is part of some update process but it isn't anything that I can schedule. If I'm in the middle of a game or other fullscreen application or recording my Windows session as a tutorial or to help another user, this erratic unload-reload behavior interferes with the use of my host. Is there someway to prevent MagicJack from disconnecting and reconnecting which causes it to unload and reload?

mphixson · Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject:

i had this problem using a wireless usb, until i moved magicjack to another usb port, (back of machine) and wirelss usb to the front of machine.

are you using wireless or hardwired to your router?

VanguardLH · MagicJack User Joined: 04 Aug 2008 Posts: 38

My connections from host to router and from router to cable modem are all wired. Getting at the basement ceiling (1st floor) was easy and I prefer wired to eliminate security and noise problems, plus at the time of choice the wireless options were too low speed.

What happens is that the magicjack.exe process unloads (i.e., it exits). I haven't been at the host or idle at the time to check if an update.exe is executing but it sure seems that MagicJack is going through some update process.

CodeMonkey · magicJack Apprentice Joined: 21 Jun 2008 Posts: 13

I also have the same problem.

az2008 · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:49 am Post subject: Re: Same thing here...

VanguardLH · MagicJack User Joined: 04 Aug 2008 Posts: 38

I had the dongle plugged into a side USB port (so I could get at it to unplugg and replug on those frequent occasions when the magicjack USB drives did not appear because their presentation data was bad when the device got polled). I used the short USB cable provided with the product. The dongle itself was velcroed in place on the side of the case (since it's the other side with the removable side panel). That side of the case is hidden by a printer next to it. It is highly unlikely that the dongle ever got moved. This behavior was noticed when the dongle was plugged into backside, side, and frontside USB ports.

As it turns out, it looks like I have yet another bad dongle. Eventually it wouldn't even provide a dial-tone to the telephone (and several telephones were tried, including cordless and corded). The software works fine. It's the dongle that fucks up. Every time the dongle is unplugged and replugged, the drive letters assigned to its USB drives get incremented (until finally the device won't increment the drives anymore and it fails to function thereafter which requires me to edit the ENUM and USBSTOR keys to reinstall the device).

I have since eliminated the dongle completely. I use the following to load the softphone:

%appdata%\mjusbsp\magicJack.exe /foreground /scf _magicJackPersonalDataRoot "C:\magicJack"

A side effect of directly loading magicjack.exe (instead of MagicJackLoader.exe) is getting rid of the useless banner screens which did nothing but waste time. This wasn't something I came up on my own. There have been other posts here on how to use the YMax/MagicJack service without using their dongle. Their reps claim the dongle is required but either they're lying or stupid (both of which reflect negatively on their support).

I copied the \magicjack folder on the 2nd emulated USB drive created by the dongle (when it was recognized) to my hard drive. This folder contains the config, log, and user data. So now the softphone runs from the hard disk (as it did before) and its data store is also on the hard disk (instead of back on the dongle). Not only did this completely eliminate the bogus and random PnP disconnect and reconnect troubles caused by their dongle, but also eliminated problems trying to get a dial-tone and the sound quality (using a headset) is vastly superior than when using the dongle.

At this point, I'll return the dongle as defective only so I have a good one sitting in the drawer, but I'll continue using the headset with the software and completely eliminate using the dongle since quality was much worse with the dongle.

Problems with dongle:
- Random PNP disconnect/reconnect cycles.
- Poor quality (not bad but eventually had so much crackling on my end only that conversations were difficult).
- Emulated USB drives for magicjack not always appear after a Windows restart.
- Interferes with CD/DVD burning software (which polls for removable media and hangs for several minutes upon finding the magicjack USB drive that emulates a CD drive).

All those problems, and probably others that I havent' mentioned, disappeared when I eliminated the use of the dongle (by copying the data store to the hard disk and having magicjack.exe read from that data store rather than from the dongle). For now, the headset is corded. Eventually I might fork out the money for a cordless headset (because a cordless phone for mobility during a call is the only reason why I wanted to use the dongle).

The dongle is bad. Frequently can't get a dial-tone (well, I get it for half a second and then gone). Picky on which phone was connected to it. High level of crackling noise (but only on my end). PnP disconnects and reconnects. And so on. Since I don't rely on it anymore to use the VOIP service, I can exchange it whenever I get around to it (will probably have to lie to the chat rep to go through their shotgun troubleshooting steps to get them to issue an RMA). I won't have to do an in-place replacement (they charge for a new unit, send it, I send back the bad one, they refund [by cancelling the charge]) like I did last time trying to eliminate an outage in the interim waiting for a replacement dongle.

For a really cheap VOIP service, it's been good so far as long as I can actually use their service. Their dongle sucks and interferes with using their service. The headset with their softphone and VOIP service sounds better than it ever did when using their dongle.

az2008 · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 10:33 pm Post subject:

CodeMonkey · magicJack Apprentice Joined: 21 Jun 2008 Posts: 13

I do not see the instructions in the FAQ....it just all about posting here.

az2008 · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:40 am Post subject: Re: Please post the link...

magicJack and magicJack Plus Support, Reviews, FAQs and Tricks

MJ reloads itself (unloads & reloads). How to stop this