bustedJOAT

well, right now express talk doesn't work for calling out, but I hit 865585@draytel.org with 3cx (which can't take calls, while ET does) and got a 'not online' recording. 5418367@sip.inphonex.com should get me via ET. and I have a free account there and at sipphone.com, so nope, no cost.

Murphy must have missed me badly, as I've only found one standard telephone number that cut me off over 4 rings or less than 10, and I gathered later they did it that way so callers were ticked and off balance by the time they got through. usual is 0,1,2, and 4 (I think 5 is the auto-voicemail she pays for from the local telco) or 10 for some regional telcos. Although some answering machines make it *sound* like 3, I admit. Uh-Oh. reality check bounced. Well, uh, YMWV as I live in the USA and PT disabled, haven't had a job since 1995... so 'appallingly ignorant' might (or might not- I do try and keep up a little) be going through minds at the moment, and if you're elsewhere (this board is in Australia, yes?) enough from where I am, likely justly so. My apologies to all for forgetting how wide a world it is on the other side of the packet train. But I had to say it, so forgive me, please. OTOH, a very nice thanks for showing me, and possibly a friend of mine, the first logical reason that *I* can accept (and have heard of, none) for installing the vPBX software on a LAN that has one (1, mine, though the p-133 laptop has one not used- it's an ebook-reader only, not on the LAN) computer with a microphone, or even speakers- as the girls want sound only when playing music or a movie to the entertainment system, a room away. and his wife doesn't want even that. He has similar motivations for wanting VOIP (but distinctly different resources to apply). He's got WinXP, newer hardware- and a modem for connection, nothing faster available. I have WinME and below on my machines, an older router, and since he picked that Gizmo softphone up and it installed without a hitch, I haven't managed to budge him. Even when it bites him. more than enough said. If you happen to think of other uses for a one-person vPBX (I don't even have an POTS extension telephone in my end of the house) please post them, as I'm befuddled enough not to see the obvious yet. On my meds, "newbie" is perpetual, as I forget. Randomly. Ignore my number of postings, at times I can hold off the haze long enough to stumble into solutions, but I tend to miss the sensible often. I'm a newbie anyway. There again it might be a good assumption in some sectors of the VOIP market, but there are exceptions. With the number of households trying out VOIP in different flavors and labels, probably a great many. Why *else* would you include an option to route the rings to the speakers rather than the SIP softphone's audio? 6 is just long enough to figure out how futile attempting to get there in time is, but more than the couple-three needed to decide to pick it up and do so if I'm actually there. IMHO. I had to figure out for my pal how to do that via the OS for the stupid g-thing and a usb headset for just that reason! I can't sit here all day- I can't go out much, but I roam the house doing things none-the-less even have to go into the yard, and would like time (from inside the house) to get to the computer, get the monitor turned on and warmed up (an instant-on LCD? I'd certainly accept happily the donation of even a 14" one, but *afford* one? I don't even dream for that these days.) and get the button clicked before the time-out. It's probably not that isolated a problem. I'll try your solution. thanks again. -Bob

Grr. Back again. Probably going to let things simmer for a while, as I have a workable solution set for current needs, but still a brain-bender. Express Talk is on my athlon XP 2800+ system, running on a fixed private IP behind a SMC Barricade 7004ABR with ports forwarded at 5060, 5070, and 8000-8010, plus a LAN-wide 'special application' hole at 3478 for STUN and I can get calls but not call out. I've dropped back to 2.02 to retain settings easier, but I've tested both 2.02 and 2.03 with the same results. The STUN servers do give my correct external IP- but at port 59090. The ones the setup wizard picked were stun.xten.com & stun1.faktortel.com.au. Calling out to *anywhere* gets a 'server not responding' after 2 'rings'. Whether the other end picks up instantly or not. Putting the machine into the DMZ doesn't help. I've tried manually checking the public IP and entering it as a fixed IP. No go. (ADSL, holds the IP a loooong time) I've tried different base ports, and forwarded accordingly. Nope. I've tried it with 4 different providers: IPtel.org, Freeworlddialup, Inphonex, and SIPphone.com. Same-o. I've tried different STUN servers. Ha. Nada. I've tried forwarding port 59090 (yeah, I know, associated with Trojan:AcidReign, but I've swept all 3 systems on the LAN with multiple virus and malware scanners and come up clean.) to no effect. As well as forwarding 59090 to either the RTP port or the SIP port. no good. And the other way around, just to be thorough. And I *used* to be able to call but not get calls, and for the life of me I can't see a thing I've changed to reverse it. But never have I had more than one direction working at once. Ever. The craziest thing (and what takes the pressure off pinning the problem to a plate and slicing it any way I can right now- all I really need is free PC-PC calling to a friend in the next state over for the moment- he uses Gizmo Project on a v.92 modem) is that I installed the 3CX softphone to test (I've tried every win98se runnable client I can find)... and *it* can call out just fine- but it can't be called- well, it can but only with one-way audio. I can talk but not listen, it refuses to detect the other end's codec. Very useless as a standalone solution. No, I don't want help with 3CX, Express Talk is far preferable for my tastes, and I want ET running right! Just another reason to ask *why*?? Most SIP Agents/VOIP clients/Softphones I've tried won't work either direction, or crash, or.... you get the point. Which is even stranger, because I set 3CX up *exactly* as I did ET, same STUN servers, ports, providers, just testing.... So I surrendered. Or at least put the problem on a back burner. My workaround at this time is: I will leave Express Talk up to take calls on sipphone.com (I'm in the white pages, look for 'mcmains' in Drain, Oregon, USA) when I'm up and willing to take calls, as the included voicemail>emailed .WAV function at sipphone catches calls when I don't have ET running so I won't miss calls. When I need to call out, I run 3CX on Freeworlddiallup *at the same time* and use it to call out. The two co-exist fine, so that gives me a breather so I can set back and research the problem... or get suggestions on how to make ET work both ways. I really would appreciate advice, as this has me going around in circles mentally. Thanks in advance for any help that is offered. I'll check in occasionally and see if there's any new ideas. Bob McMains, the hick in the sticks.

well, seems I didn't look close enough at the wiki entry so I must amend the above to: *Instant messaging* in Google Talk uses an open protocol, XMPP, (like other Jabber servers do) so that users of various clients with XMPP can communicate. but the wiki does say: And, while I don't know how he pulled it off, my friend was playing 'call himself' using Gizmo and Google Talk on XP. Since Gizmo's what he uses for SIP calls, I retract my 'cant' and toss in a 'if you know how, you can, at least through the servers'. I still strongly doubt that google talk can IP-link to a sip client. But that's an opinion, and not worth much. Pardon me while I slink under a rock for posting misleading info. Bob the muddlehead

Google Talk uses XMPP protocol, (Jabber, mostly) not SIP- so Express Talk and Google Talk won't be able to call each other. the only SIP client that has even limited (text only) XMPP compatibility is Gizmo Project, and that only the Instant Messaging. But if you have Express Talk on both ends, here's how- From the Express Talk Help: Oh, well. I had a pal ask that a bit back, now i can answer him. I suspect that PC-PC dialing can be used with dynamic IP's if you used something like a dyndns free account for each dynamic IP and used [username]@[accountname] rather than [username]@[iP address]. I may try that to see if it helps diagnose my can-be-called but can't-call-out problem. Hmmmm....

I think that for the moment, I'm gonna call this a dead topic, at least as far as the thread title goes; Now I have the other problem it seems. I can get calls- but not make them. on 2 of the 4 providers in testing. When I know more, maybe I will figure out why there's a difference, and even perhaps why one way doesn't work at all.

this is a heads-up, pointing to some correlations- I think this is a bug, in 2.03 specifically. repeatable, as posts have stated. And I think I can guess what it's related to. From my more disjointed but much more copious notations in http://nch.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=6119, Oy. the compiler giveth and the compiler taketh away.

and once I got 2.02 straightened out, it appears that 2.02 will hold the line settings.... even after twice turned off and a cold reboot of the computer. <sigh> so it's a bug in 2.03, probably a side effect of the different storage of the password. Didn't I see a thread about wanting a more secure password storage than plaintext in the registry? for shame. Don't y'all know no good deed goes unpunished? Murphy is L.His.A.O.R.O.T.F.L. at all of us. [like, I have those passwords on my personal box (I'm disabled, no company IT, just me) in at least 3 text files while I'm attempting to get reliable voip- do I care? If it works, I won't fix it. Hmmm. Ok, sometimes I get fooled.]

notes on importing registry values: if you have 2.02 installed, the passwords for each line are in plain ASCII, and the same type of key as the rest of the line settings. if you have 2.03 installed, the passwords for each line are in hex, different keytype, so the icon is different. *IF YOU SWITCH VERSIONS* from 2.03 to 2.02 the registry values in hex (in fact, many regkeys) are *not* removed by the uninstall program and have to be manually removed or changed if needed. The switch the other way may have the same problem; *remove* the incorrect keys for ProxyPassword at least for each line or Express Talk will very probably get confused. Mine did. Badly. And the proxy servers didn't like it at all. Still bashing at my IP problems, I have STUN tunneled through the firewall, and I'm now trying to force the port on the STUN server reply (or how ET interprets it) back to something under 50,000. OOk. Bob the Animal, back to tilting cannon at windmills. P.S. Experimentation works better if you leave the "default line" info blank, as it waits to bounce wrong info off the SIP providers until you re-import the values. Have fun.

notes on importing registry values: if you have 2.02 installed, the passwords for each line are in plain ASCII, and the same type of key as the rest of the line settings. if you have 2.03 installed, the passwords for each line are in hex, different keytype, so the icon is different. *IF YOU SWITCH VERSIONS* from 2.03 to 2.02 the registry values in hex (in fact, many regkeys) are *not* removed by the uninstall program and have to be manually removed or changed if needed. The switch the other way may have the same problem; *remove* the incorrect keys for ProxyPassword at least for each line or Express Talk will very probably get confused. Mine did. Badly. And the proxy servers didn't like it at all. Still bashing at my IP problems, I have STUN tunneled through the firewall, and I'm now trying to force the port on the STUN server reply (or how ET interprets it) back to something under 50,000. OOk. Bob the Animal, back to tilting cannon at windmills. P.S. Experimentation works better if you leave the "default line" info blank, as it waits to bounce wrong info off the SIP providers until you re-import the values. Have fun.

It appears that I have to correct this misstatement- I thought it was correct, but I had only the nVidia southbridge NIC enabled (sans MAC) and the RTL8100L is the one disabled since day one. But only one *ethernet* NIC, so I didn't catch my real blind spot until later. Turns out Windows *thought* I had more than one network interface available, though I hadn't thought it could be regarded as a network. I was wrong, and anyone who has an nVidia video card with [or as] a video capture device may see the same problem. (I have no way of telling if other VC hardware acts this way, it came stock on this card, a phillips capture chip, feeding into the MSI FX5700 chipset somehow. this uses an nVidia WDM driver for an A/V crossbar, TV tuner and Capture interface...) Not so, when I finally looked at the network properties closely. The nVidia WDM TV tuner/capture device was there, linked to a blank tcp/ip properties page. And *it* had been assigned 2.0.0.1, having no subnet mask. disabling then removing it changed the problem. Also, isn't right either. Turns out, per ET network detection to be a symmetric NAT somehow. I got it working by tossing it into the DMZ zone, and a couple of STUN servers came up in detection. However, now my SIP number appears to be account@my.public.ip, and I can get a ring but not connect with an gizmo account call.

should include "after opening the options and pressing ok to get a restart." solly. I'm an animal.

At the moment the answer to is Yes, I have, and no, it don't. In fact all the lines are wiped to the default. and the answer to is that it applies the default to the lines at program startup in the registry- even if that's a set of blanks. On the other hand, I did another semi-logical test, which I'm sure somebody can streamline and make easier than the klunky, crude method I used, and it appears that if one exports line1 through lineX (and defaultline if one wants [i did, a blank one]- and you have to go one line farther than the last filled in under "options" to save into the registry ) as individual regedit .reg files from regedit (or editor-of-taste, I'm a gimp, ok?) and imports them after ET is running, the settings are restored and ET stops saying it can't find a server at "" (blank default... oops.) and starts logging on the services in the added keys right after. this workaround help? (I know, a text editor and a couple minutes and it's one file- I just don't recall how to have it imported after a program start- automatically, that is.) Or am I in trouble?

should include "after opening the options and pressing ok to get a restart." solly. I'm an animal.

check thread "Express Talk forgets Line Settings after restart, Other than default settings are not kept" for updates. but at the moment the answer to is Yes, I have, and no, it don't. In fact all the lines are wiped to the default. and the answer to is that it applies the default to the lines at program startup in the registry- even if that's a set of blanks. On the other hand, I did another semi-logical test, which I'm sure somebody can streamline and make easier than the klunky, crude method I used, and it appears that if one exports line1 through lineX (and defaultline if one wants [i did, a blank one]- and you have to go one line farther than the last filled in under "options" to save into the registry ) as individual regedit .reg files from regedit (or editor-of-taste, I'm a gimp, ok?) and imports them after ET is running, the settings are restored and ET stops saying it can't find a server at "" (blank default... oops.) and starts logging on the services in the added keys right after. this workaround help? (I know, a text editor and a couple minutes and it's one file- I just don't recall how to have it imported after a program start- automatically, that is.) Or am I in trouble?