Windows 10 november update 1511 broke DAX...

Rick Hadley - W0FG

This is the error message Windows is returning when I click on properties for any of the virtual ports...   "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information in the registry is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)".  It's obviously a registry issue, but I have no clue on how to fix it.  There are no unusual indications from CAT.  The physical com ports are there, as is the 5/15 ptt pair, which show up in both the 'Serial Ports' tab and the 'Port Map' tab, in the latter both are shown as connected to 'unknown'.

Jay Nation

Rick Ok so it's code 19. That's another way of saying you have a registry error. We need to try to repair that error. Which is kind of outside the scope of "Friendly Guy on the Internet Said Try This". Hmm, make a backup of your registry in regedit.exe. "After" you've got it backed up!!! Maybe a reboot to safe mode and selecting "Last Known Good" might restore your old registry entries. (Windows keeps a registry backup for a qood reason.) Or ... Do you have System Restore setup with a restore point from just before the trouble started, and hopefully after you may have upgraded to Windows 10? Don't even attempt either of those two ideas unless you already been successful with either approach in the past. I should probably stop now. While you think about how much worse things could get. 73, Jay - NO5J

Sergey R5AU

Hi All, from me personal experience with W10 Pre, W10 official, W10 Pro Pre : always before new release or build I am uninstalling SSDR completely - update W- install fresh SSDR

Jay Nation

Sergey
I agree thats the easiest way. I've tried most of the hard ways I think.
A clean install of SSDR as if it's never been installed works best.
There's a pretty good guide in the Zendesk.
73, Jay - NO5J

Sergey R5AU

Yeah Jay. at least I am lost my Windows minimum 4 times with such cases in relation to the registry, however in my case come back very easy - using Virtual Machine - just copy-past operation to be alive in 5 minutes. Nevertheless , deleting and installing SSDR give to Ham minimum disadvantage of losses - just lost persistence and VSP/DAX configuration what easy to set up new.
In any way: uninstalling SSDR- upgrade Windows-installing SSDR is safety way to keep nerves as well !

Have a nice weekend BTW !

Jerry Wilk

Fortunately, I had just installed win 10 with update and my DAX quite working.  After 4 removals and reinstalls of smartsdr.   I was able to roll back to win 8.1 and DAX is working again.

David Decoons, wo2x

For those still having DAX issues try this Help Desk article.

https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204017069-How-to-Manually-Re-Install-DAX-Drivers

You will need to change the path to reflect the version of SmartSDR you are running. (1.51 instead of 1.4)

Important! Make sure you run command prompt as administrator.

Dave wo2x

N7BCP

Maybe you could reproduce this in your lab and work out exactly what DAX related setting or file is getting changed during the Windows upgrade. If you can't prevent it maybe a future version of DAX or one of the companion flex apps can automatically correct it. The SSDR Windows setup repair mode could be changed to verify the DAX installation and fix it. Microsoft is going to be releasing updates like this more frequently than they have in the past.

Wim

I did a full SmartSDR uninstall, deleted virtual serial ports, removed dax drivers, rebooted then did the 4GB Win 10 update, then re-installed smartSDR and now getting "virtual serial port service errors". I have a feeling it has to do with the faster Win10 boot mechanism introduced in this Win 10 update and starting the services out of order or such ..

Jon_KF2E

I haven't had this problem yet but I was wondering if it was occurring on systems that don't have a physical serial port?

Wim

I have two real physical serial ports via a PCIe card

Jon_KF2E

Are they working correctly?

Wim

yes no problems with the real ports

Wim

After another unsintall reinstall cycle now smart CAT taskbar icon stays (doesn't exit) but the com ports don't show up even though device manager has them ..

Jay Nation

Wim

For grins and verification, I did the full uninstall/reinstall of SmartSDR last night, on my Windows 10 Home PC. Strictly following each step in this guide ...
https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204975589-How-to-do-a-Complete-uninstall-of-SmartSDR-for-Windows-from-your-PC

Once SSDR was removed completely and the reinstalled, initially the only problem I had was my FlexControl was not being recognized by SSDR, I then uninstalled/reinstalled the FlexControl drivers. I followed the steps in ...
https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/205004159-How-to-Manually-Reinstall-the-SmartSDR-FlexControl-Driver-

Then repeated those steps several times, and finally it took and the FlexControl was being recognized on Com50 like I intended it to be.
AutoManually sort of.

Once SSDR was reinstalled and after the FlexControl was working, I moved back to creating some Virtual cables with SmartCAT.

Initially Device manager was only showing my Physical com ports, and com4 and com14. mostly because I hadn't created any cables yet.

I created a few with SmartCAT which displayed them correctly. But, Device manager wouldn't display the new ports even after telling it to Scan for hardware changes.

I tried restarting SmartCAT, SmartSDR, and power cycled the radio, and Device manager still failed to see the new ports.

Then I rebooted the PC, and again, like magic, the Device Manager found all the New Com ports, they seem to work like they are supposed to, but Device Manager is not so sure.

All my virtual Comports look like the following examples.


That looks happy!


But that looks a little strange. The driver is ftvsport.sys and is listed in the Details view ...


I wonder if it could be digitally signed. Maybe that's not the problem.

The Resources tab is also kind of odd looking.

Device Manager thinks there is a problem after all.

But the port's are working fine, maybe it's Device Manager that's not working.
What to do about it, is a mystery. 

SmartSDR seems to be as good as ever, right now. 

I suppose I'll just have to keep playing radio as is, until someone figures this out.
It's a Windows problem more than its an NO5J problem.

Addendum:
Finally Windows update is now insisting on updating me to 1511. Maybe it's NO5J's turn to cry!
But first let's insure i've got a good restore point.

73, Jay - NO5J

KM6CQ - Dan

So my upgrade to Win 10 was just fine until the updates came out last week.
Now none of my VSP ports work that are created by smart cat. 
Fortunately I use DDUtil and CW skimmer. The two most important programs will work with SDR.

Jay Nation

Ok, the 1511 upgrade did seem to require a complete Uninstall/Reinstall of all software from Flexradio Systems, to get my 6500 running again. The guide on the Zendesk, has the exact procedure. the only thing I did different was, as I installed, I verified that the expected devices showed up in Device Manager, and if they didn't I rebooted and made sure they did appear, correctly, before proceeding further. Probably not necessary to do it that way, one reboot after all steps were done would likely have worked just as well.

The FlexControl needed a manual reinstall, SSDR came with the drivers for it but I had to Uninstall/Reinstall them manually to get SSDR to see the FlexControl.

All seems to be working now.

Blame the pain on Microsoft!

73, Jay - NO5J  

Jay Nation

So to summarize, for grins, giggles and verification, Yesterday, I perfomed a full uninstall of all Flexradio software from my PC as is recommended, before trying to upgrade to windows 10.

I had already upgraded to Windows 10, And didn't do a full uninstall of Flexradio Systems software before I upgraded. Mainly because I hadn't seen the Guide on the Zendesk yet. The main thing I did wrong at the time was not removing all the Virtual Com ports correctly, or completely.

This time I did that and also made sure all the DAX devices were also completely removed before, reinstalling. After reinstalling SSDR the only problem device was the FlexControl, after manually reinstalling the FlexControl drivers the radio connected to it FB.

Then this morning Microsoft Windows updated decided to go ahead and do the upgrade to 1511. I created a System Restore point before it had finished downloading the 1511 update.

I did not do the recommended Uninstall of SmartSDR first. just to see what would happen. The Upgrade to 1511 went smoothly and rather slowly. And after that was complete I tried to start SSDR, all I got was an error dialog about power cycling the radio and try again.

I tried that 2-3 times, rebooted the PC a couple of times and threw in the towel.

I then proceeded to do the Full Uninstall/Removal of SSDR as per the Zendesk guide.

AGAIN!

After that I reinstalled SmartSDR, and also reinstalled the FlexControl driver as if it was new.

And it worked.

Everything is as good as before.

My recommendation is follow the guide. Step by step, and your good to go.

73, Jay - NO5J   

Wim

it worked for you though not for me, followed the uninstall guide 100%

Rick Hadley - W0FG

I fully understand that this is Windows fault, but it's also a Flex problem.  Austin is a whole bunch smaller than Redmond, and these things are going to reoccur if Austin isn't keeping themselves, at least on pace with, if not a step ahead of Redmond.  Flex needs to be alpha/beta testing Windows releases for SSDR compatibility and fixing or warning us all well ahead of time.  A Windows update should not break SSDR, nor should an SSDR upgrade break things in Windows.

Chris DL5NAM

FRS: ... it is recommended that you remove completely SmartSDR for Windows from you PC just before the upgrade and to remove all drivers and configuration files to prevent any conflicts. JUST BEFORE !?!?!?!?! A real good joke FRS. Do you know really W10? It's time for a SSDR patch !!!! NOW !

AA0KM

Re-installing fixed DAX but not my com ports until the 3rd try.

Second time of install my comports where 4-14 but had a question mark in the box.

Un-installed=reinstalled again

When rebooted computer all was fine.

This picture of device manager is right after the first un-install.

Left overs of com ports.

KM6CQ - Dan

Okay, 
So I updated to win 10 a couple of months ago. I did not unistall SSDR. Everything worked as it normally does. Then Win 10 updated last week and broke all the VSP. 
So last night I did a complete uninstall of SSDR following the exact procedure by Tim Ellison here, https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204975589-How-to-do-a-Complete-uninstall-of-SmartSD...
And it all works perfectly now. I thought it was interesting to see all of the greyed out ghost comports that were not in use. 

Al_NN4ZZ

Hi Dave, 
I also had the DAX driver error after the latest win10 update.  In my case if was preventing CW Skimmer from functioning.  Since the file path names in the help desk article are for an older version I used a slightly different process to get at the .bat files.  It worked fine for me and solved the problem.  

Basically I just navigated to the latest SmartSDR Vx folder (V1.5.1) for the 64 bit drivers and executed the 6 bat files.    When running them, right click and run as administrator.  After the reboot, all was fine.  Quick fix and I didn't need to uninstall and re-install all of SSDR.

Screenshot shows the 64 bit driver folder and the IQ_DAX sub-folder.  


Regards, Al / NN4ZZ  
al (at) nn4zz (dot) com
6700 - HW......... V 1.5.1.70
SSDR / DAX...... V 1.5.1.152
CAT................... V 1.5.1.0
Win10

Wim

Well since someone mentioned 3 times is a charm, me too did another round of full uninstall per guidelines plenty of reboots, then had to instal;l SmartSDR twice as the first time it complained about VSP not being loaded, another reboot and now smartCAT was showing a COM port in the 'connect 3rd party programs here'. Then I plugged in Flex Control, and created two more COM ports one for Digital programs CAT port and one for PTT CAT port.

So now I have Win 10 SP1 with SmartSDR 1.5.1 running but it sure is not a slam dunk install.

Jay Nation

Wim
I find hard one successes, are usually more satisfying in the long run. 
Congratulations! Wim. You seem to have won this round. There will be "quite a few", "more" rounds
in the future.  If at first you don't succeed, Do the whole procedure over again and again, step by step, until the software learns it's not the boss. 

On to the next battle!
For we are warriors!


73, Jay - NO5J

Roy Laufer

Wasn't Einstein erroneously quoted as saying:

"The definition of madness is a man who does the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome?"

Whoever really originated that line never had to deal with Microsoft Windows!

Roy AC2GS

Wim

It sure was fun to go through this (not)... Can't wait for SP2 and do it again ;-)
July next year it is, I'll avoid the ham shack for a while then ...

Jay Nation

They changed the definition a few years back to. "The definition of madness is Microsoft".

There's also a proposed redefinition, "The definition of madness is Microsoft, and it's repeat customers". Some of the customers objected, many just nodded in affirmation and shrugged.

73, Jay - NO5J 

Jerry W2TXB

Count me in as one whose SSDR 1.5.1 presented with the OP's signs and symptoms, but also count me in as one who did a complete removal of SSDR, CAT, and DAX (using Win 10 Control Panel's "Uninstall" method) and reinstalled everything. I then loaded (imported) my settings, and it all works as it should.

Now that I have posted this, I am wondering if I jinxed myself and my SSDR... probably should not have posted this.

My station setup is: Win 10 w/ latest updates, 6700, FLDigi (latest version, which I left as is); PC is a home built (recently rebuilt and upgraded) i5/3.5 gHz CPU, 16-gb RAM, and Wi-Fi connection to router.

Sincere thanks to all who have posted suggestions and experiences here. As always, the FlexRadio team and those "in the field" are an extraordinary crew.