Hi:
I had been using an FTDIUSB to serial cable successfully with my Compaq Presario F572US laptop to connect to BBB's. Works fine under XP, of course, and initially under Vista, but after "upgrading" my Vista to SP1 I am unable to use the FT232-based cable.
(The upgrade was an attempt to fix a problem with the wireless support, which I eventually fixed through an unrelated registry patch).
Vista claims its internal driver is optimal, but it doesn't find any appropriate settings for IRQ and IO address. All attempts to install the FTDI driver downloaded from here (http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM ... tified.zip) fail. I've attempted to install this driver both using the "upgrade driver" feature from Device manager, and via the setup executable from the FTDI web pages. Either the serial port device does not show up at all in Device Manager, or it shows up, disabled with invalid settings.
Anyone else had this problem (yet) or found a workaround?
Jerry
FTDI cable problems under Vista+SP1?
Re: FTDI cable problems under Vista+SP1?
Jerry,
I don't have a machine with Vista on it and am also not much of a Windows troubleshooter. You might try posting this in the Arduino forum too, and also try FTDI. My experience with them is that is takes two to five days for them to get back to you, but they eventually do. I've definitely had some issues getting their drivers installed over the years but not so much lately, thankfully.
My hunch is that you've got to find a piece of a previous driver and get it uninstalled, and then hooking up the cable will prompt the new install.
Paul
I don't have a machine with Vista on it and am also not much of a Windows troubleshooter. You might try posting this in the Arduino forum too, and also try FTDI. My experience with them is that is takes two to five days for them to get back to you, but they eventually do. I've definitely had some issues getting their drivers installed over the years but not so much lately, thankfully.
My hunch is that you've got to find a piece of a previous driver and get it uninstalled, and then hooking up the cable will prompt the new install.
Paul
Re: FTDI cable problems under Vista+SP1?
Hi Paul:
My guess is that your guess is correct.
I've tried uninstalling the existing driver, but I'll bet it is still hanging around somewhere. Hopefully FTDI will get back on this one. I'm also pretty sure that it is related to SP1 -- my Vista system was working Ok with the FTDI cable before I upgraded.
And I wouldn't use Vista if I didn't have to, that's for sure. I bought a laptop during that period when Vista was all you could get, and I'm stuck with it, I guess.
I'll update this forum with an account of any progress.
Jerry
My guess is that your guess is correct.
I've tried uninstalling the existing driver, but I'll bet it is still hanging around somewhere. Hopefully FTDI will get back on this one. I'm also pretty sure that it is related to SP1 -- my Vista system was working Ok with the FTDI cable before I upgraded.
And I wouldn't use Vista if I didn't have to, that's for sure. I bought a laptop during that period when Vista was all you could get, and I'm stuck with it, I guess.
I'll update this forum with an account of any progress.
Jerry
Re: FTDI cable problems under Vista+SP1?
Well, I did get the FTDI cable drivers installed and working under my newly SP1'd Vista laptop.
The support folks at FTDI were helpful although I had somehow stumbled over the solution by the time the e-mail arrived.
However, as there are some useful tidbits for anyone else having these or similar problems getting your cable to work between Vista and a BBB or other Arduino-workalike, I am posting an edited version of the mail from FTDI support below:
> Can you check the idVenodor and idProduct with USBVIEW.
>
>
usbview is a utility from Microsoft that shows a tree view of USB controllers and devices. Clicking on a device allows you to see a lot of driver-dependent info, such as the values below. You can download usbview here:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Resources/Utilities.htm
>
> If the values are 0430 and 6001 then the default driver should install.
>
>
These were, in fact, the values I saw, once I got the driver working.
>
> Now switch on phantom devices and remove FTDI drivers form the Device
> Manager Window.
>
> http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/AppNo ... ptions.pdf
>
>
Ok, it took me a bit of googling (and reading the note above) to find out that "phantom" devices are just
USB devices for which drivers exist, but which are not currently plugged into your system.
I don't know that I ever actually enabled this option (it requires that you set a System environment variable), but
this might have made my repeated uninstall and re-install attempts unnecessary.
The document above has a lot of good info re the ins and outs of Vista drivers, including workarounds to uninstall drivers despite Vista's (to me) misguided attempts to prevent that in the interest of "security". (Obnoxious limits on personal freedom in the name of "security" -- where have I heard that before..?)
>
> Now install the latest driver 2.04.06.
>
>
That I did, and it works fine from version 0011 alpha of Arduino, which is the latest and greatest Win version at the time of this writing.
>
> By the way this was certified using SP1.
>
And I am sure this is true. Perhaps my drivers stopped working for some reason other than the SP1 "upgrade" I installed.
Anyway, after yet another long night of Vista-hacking, I am once again ready to do something productive with the BBB and the Arduino software.
Thanks to FTDI for the help and thanks to Paul for this board.
Jerry
The support folks at FTDI were helpful although I had somehow stumbled over the solution by the time the e-mail arrived.
However, as there are some useful tidbits for anyone else having these or similar problems getting your cable to work between Vista and a BBB or other Arduino-workalike, I am posting an edited version of the mail from FTDI support below:
> Can you check the idVenodor and idProduct with USBVIEW.
>
>
usbview is a utility from Microsoft that shows a tree view of USB controllers and devices. Clicking on a device allows you to see a lot of driver-dependent info, such as the values below. You can download usbview here:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Resources/Utilities.htm
>
> If the values are 0430 and 6001 then the default driver should install.
>
>
These were, in fact, the values I saw, once I got the driver working.
>
> Now switch on phantom devices and remove FTDI drivers form the Device
> Manager Window.
>
> http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/AppNo ... ptions.pdf
>
>
Ok, it took me a bit of googling (and reading the note above) to find out that "phantom" devices are just
USB devices for which drivers exist, but which are not currently plugged into your system.
I don't know that I ever actually enabled this option (it requires that you set a System environment variable), but
this might have made my repeated uninstall and re-install attempts unnecessary.
The document above has a lot of good info re the ins and outs of Vista drivers, including workarounds to uninstall drivers despite Vista's (to me) misguided attempts to prevent that in the interest of "security". (Obnoxious limits on personal freedom in the name of "security" -- where have I heard that before..?)
>
> Now install the latest driver 2.04.06.
>
>
That I did, and it works fine from version 0011 alpha of Arduino, which is the latest and greatest Win version at the time of this writing.
>
> By the way this was certified using SP1.
>
And I am sure this is true. Perhaps my drivers stopped working for some reason other than the SP1 "upgrade" I installed.
Anyway, after yet another long night of Vista-hacking, I am once again ready to do something productive with the BBB and the Arduino software.
Thanks to FTDI for the help and thanks to Paul for this board.
Jerry