Mike's Technology and Finance Blog

Mike's Technology and Finance Blog covers a number of different topics in finance and
technology. Most technical posts provide architecture, development, implementation,
troubleshooting techniques for different Enterprise IT systems that run on the Windows,
UNIX, and Linux platforms. Some posts also include my personal opinions and rants.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Get HyperTerminal in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2

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Hyperterminal in Recent Windows

Releases
Update: Need HyperTerminal for Windows 8 and windows Server 2012?

Don't Have Windows Xp or Server 2003 anymore? Try these HyperTermoinal

Alternatives.

What is Hyperterminal?
Hyperterminal is an application that allows terminal emulation in Windows for some
types of devices. Hyperterminal communicates over serial connections (such as RS-
232), via a dial up modem, or via the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet
Protocol (IP). For TCP/IP connections and modem connections, the most common
target is a telnet daemon set up on a Windows or Linux system in order to give access to
a text based application or console.

Hyperterminal Setup
HyperTerminal was not released in any Windows version after Windows XP/Windows
Server 2003. Getting HyperTerminal in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2
requires access to an installation of Windows XP (I used a recent ISO of Windows XP
SP3). Two files are required for Hyperterminal to function in later Windows releases
from the Windows XP installation:

c:\Program Files\Windows NT\Hypertrm.exe

c:\Windows\System32\hypertrm.dll

Copy these files to the same directory on the target Windows 7/2008 R2 system and
Hyperterminal can easily be launched by running the Hypertrm.exe executable.
Hyperterminal Configuration (USB/RS-232)
HyperTerminal automatically detects COM ports, attempts to communicate over
modems, and allows TCP/IP connections to be initiated using the telnet protocol. To
access devices (such as Cisco routers and switches) and other devices that use a serial
connection, I use a USB-to-Serial converter and use device manager to determine which
COM port is emulated by the USB converter.

HyperTerminal automatically detects the COM port and allows the connection settings
(speed/data bits/stop bits/parity/flow control) to be set and the connected device to be
accessed. For Cisco devices this is typically 9600 bps, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity,
and no flow control.

Hyperterminal Configuration (TCP/IP)

In this example, I am going to use Hyperterminal to access a telnet daemon that is
running on a Linux virtual machine on my network. I am using a Fedora Core 15 system
with the telnet-server package as the telnet server. After installing the telnet-server
package with yum, configuring xinetd, and having the iptables firewall allow telnet
connections, I was able to test logging in with Hyperterminal.

First, I launch Hyperterminal and specify that I want to use the TCP/IP.
After connecting and authenticating, I now have a successful connection to my Linux
VM. Note that this is over a private network (technically one that never leaves the
Hyper-V host system). Since this type of telnet is totally unencrypted, it should not be
used in most circumstances (rather a telnet secured by kerberos encryption may be more
desirable, but is incompatible with Hyperterminal). Unsecure telnet may be used on a
totally trusted network or one where other security measures are in place (such as
IPSec), but an encrypted solution such as SSH is recommended instead.

HyperTerminal Substitute
If you do not have access to a Windows XP system, Putty can be used instead of
Hyperterminal to access serial devices. Additionally, putty supports connections using
more protocols than Hyperterminal (including an encrypted alternative, SSH).

Configuring putty as a serial client is as easy as using the serial node in the tree view
and specifying serial as the connection type.