Microsoft Updates and USB drivers

Possible USB Upgrade Problems, courtesy of Microsoft

Recently (from mid-August 2017 to September 6th when this article was written) various Microsoft periodic updates have also included replacing USB driver code.  We have multiple reports of issues arising from this where after the updates a previously working serial port (connected by way of an USB adapter) no longer runs or allows connections to SNIP or to other devices.

Known effected drivers include at least:

  • uBlox 6T and M8T device drivers  (native drivers)
  • Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2303HX Rev D Chipset)

We are unaware of any reports for devices using the CH340 chip set at this time.

We are unaware of any reports for devices using the uBlox 8M chip set at this time.

How to Overcome this

Fully reset the machine (power off and then on, and not just a reset).  Once the machine has restarted and settled down, unplug all USB devices.  Plug them back in.  If your USB devices connect by way of a common HUB, you can simply disconnect them there.  It appears that the act of restarting the USB drivers is required to complete the upgrade.  Once this is done, all the machines which were reporting issues should again be fully functional.

 

See Also:

This helpful link found on the rtklibexplorer site which cater to folks using RTKLIB with uBlox chipsets.
This is a great site full of useful an practical details on how to setup RTKLIB and get the most out of it.
The gist of this article is that uBlox drivers have been at time caught in mother Microsoft issues as well.
And its moving to a new site which you can find at:  http://rtkexplorer.com/

 

 






Possible Firewall defaulting settings changes from Microsoft

Recently (from August 2017 to September 6th when this article was written) various Microsoft updates also seem to have changed the default behavior on the stock machine firewall on both Windows 7 and 10 to no longer replying to PING commands from devices not local to your machine.  The evidence of this is less clear.

You can seek for how to enable ping in Window 7 to find several useful articles.

PING (or Echo Request – ICMPv4-Inis a very good way to see quickly if the other machine itself is reachable.  But if you are interested in seeing if a remote copy of the SNIP is up, simply enter its address and port on our monitoring tool   If you see a table reply, the caster in question is operational.

 

 






 When in doubt

When in doubt, cold start the suspect machine with no USB devices plugged in.  Once up and stable, then plug in one device at a time, watching for the drivers to load.  This may be enough to overcome the issue, but if not – at least it will tell you which device/driver could not be created.

As a rule, do not allow a production machine running SNIP to be automatically updated, or else when the re-start of the OS occurs, then SNIP (and perhaps other services you need) will be off line.

Connecting Ports / USB to your PC

On Adding Serial UART Data

Connecting Serials Ports

 

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