Installing the IR Link Driver for Windows 7

NOTE: THIS PROCEDURE ONLY WORKS WITH THE BLUE IR LINK ADAPTER.

The IR Link Driver is an essential part of the Fleet Manager II program. Without the driver you will be unable to fetch information from your gas monitors and will also be unable to save custom settings. BW Technologies has released a new driver as well as a set of simple instructions for installing this driver on Windows 7 computers. You can install the IR Link (GA-USB1-IR) on your Windows 7 computer by following the instructions starting below. The same files will work for Windows 8 (and 8.1) computers and we will have a separate article for that. It requires a more specific option setup.


Download the Files



If you click all three of the files in the window above, it will create the folder on your computer to download the driver. When it asks if you would like to open or save the folder, click Save. It should show up in your "Downloads" library once it is finished. You will want to drag it to the desktop as shown below:


Plug in the IR Link


Once you have the file saved to your desktop, you will plug in the IR Link. If this is the first time you have plugged in the IR Link to the computer, wait about one minute so that it can fail to install automatically.

Opening the "Device Manager"

You will then need to get to the device manager area of the computer. For those of you who are not particularly familiar with Windows 7 or the Device Manager, you will want to RIGHT-CLICK the Computer icon and select "Manage".

The next thing you will want to do is click the Device Manager from the list under System Tools as shown below.

Installation of the New Driver


A large list will appear on the Device Manager screen. This will list every piece of hardware on or attached to your computer that it recognizes. For an unrecognized device like the IR Link, you will generally find it in the "Other Devices" section. You will want to RIGHT-CLICK the device called "BW IRLink Adaptor" and then click on the "Update Drier Software" option.

You will get a pop-up almost immediately asking how you want to search for the driver. The second option (Browse My Computer) is what you will want to choose. Recall that you moved the driver software to your desktop for this next section.


When the new window appears, click "Browse" again.


Under the Desktop you should see the folder for the IRLinkDriver that you downloaded above.


Select that folder, press OK, and it will update the location on the following screen. Press Next.



At this point, you will get a security warning. This is because Windows does not recognize the driver that is being used. You will want to press "Install Anyway" as shown below.



After a minute or two, you will get a notification box that says the software was installed successfully.



That should take care of the driver installation and get your IR Link working on Windows 7. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or are having trouble installing the driver after following the directions listed here. After the driver is installed, we recommend you test it by linking a monitor to your computer via Fleet Manager II. The computer should now be able to recognize the gas monitors and be able to send/receive information from them.