Extrememly Short Range

[bripappas]

My TIR4 has recently started to only work at extreme close ranges (i.e. less then 14 inches) and I have no idea why. On the tracking screen I can clearly see the three reflective surfaces of the track hat clip up to several feet away, but it does not track unless I am really close. I did notice that the light filtering setting seems to be directly realted to the range I can view. To be able to get the 12-14 inches that I can get the light filtering has to be enabled and set on the minimum seting of 40, as I increase this number I have to get closer and closer to the device for tracking to work. Also I noticed that if I change from vector to dot mode the range is the normal 1 - 6 feet. It seems like when the device is in vector mode that it just stops tracking at normal ranges. Any ideas.
Thanks

[VincentG]

Have you tried cleaning the metal vector (Track) clip?

Are the camera LEDs enabled, within the software?

[bripappas]

Yes, Camera LEDs On is checked as well as Use blue LED for TrackIR Enhanced.

I have tried cleaning the clip, but I do not think that is the problem as I can clearly see the reflective material on the tracking screen. I have alos tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software as long as trying other versions.

I may be completely wrong but it seems that the light filtering is causing the problems.

[bripappas]

I messed around with it some more and found that it works perfectly on my XP machine, but the machine in question is a Vista machine. I have tried every usb port I have including isolating it as the only device and noticed that in some usb ports i get the same short range behavior and in others the device manager will recognize that the track ir is connected but the software will not. Any other ideas.

[VincentG]

Could be a power issue, in regards to the USB device, not getting enough current to fully power the IR LEDs.

Do you have an external USB hub, with its' own power supply?

[bripappas]

A power issue is the problem, I continued to play with different usb configurations for all of my usb devices untill all of a sudden one worked. I continued to mess around with it and what I found out is that I can only get the Track Ir to work on one of my 13 (4 motherbaord, 2 case, 7 powered hub) usb ports and it is only one of them on the motherboard. Anyway, thanks for help. I have a solution that works, but I will continue to try to figure out why it only works on one.
Once again Thanks.