CAT doesn't work after Windows update

Bob - WD8KND

Everything worked fine yesterday. During the night Windows did an upgrade. Now my logging program will not communicate with my radio through the CAT program. When I go to my device manager it says that it can't start the device because of a error in the registry or it is damaged. (code 19) I had a similar problem when Win 10 came out. I reloaded SSDR back then and that fixed it. I tried reloading this time and it didn't. I've re-booted the computer to no avail. Anybody with a similar problem or with a resolution?

Bob - WD8KND

Followed Tim's "Complete uninstall...." and all is good again. I HATE Microsoft.

Burt Fisher

Did you know when Microsoft developed Windows 10 they did not call Flex to see if it was compatible with Smart SDR?  Just as schools do not adjust opening time to address a particular students desire to sleep later.

Mark_WS7M

It's all business.  I friend of mine that works at M$ said the reason Win10 was set to autoinstall updates is because of business reasons.  In particular M$ was flooded with support calls from typical users that were all fixable had the user installed a particular update.  So they decided to force them down our throats.

If you are an enterprise user you can turn of the Win10 updates but not exactly sure how that works.

I had a similar problem in another thread where for me DAX stopped working.  I had to reinstall 5 times to get everything to work and frankly it only started working when I got on Teamviewer with Dudley.

Anyway while I realize that Flex is not the culprit here and blame can be pointed at M$ for this it will ultimately fall on Flex to make it work.  Dudley let me know that LOTS of Win10 testing is happening so hopefully future releases will be a little more stable.

On the Mac side of things I had a WONDERFUL program called WireTap anywhere that allowed the routing of digital audio just about anyway you wanted.  It would have been amazing to use with DogparkSDR to route audio to things like Cocoa Modem Multimode.  Well Apple changed a bunch of stuff and made it so that what Wiretap did was no longer acceptable and the work around was a huge unreliable pain in the ****.  So they just terminated the product.

Now when using Dogpark to get sound from Dogpark into say Cocoa Modem I have to do fancy routing with external USB stuff.  What a pain!  But this is similar to M$ and the Win10 updates.  It is so easy to break something that someone depends upon.

Jim Gilliam

Please try GWX...it's free, no more updates and you can bide your time until Microsoft gets its act together...if it ever does. It also, allows you to resume  updates if you are one of those bold ones who wants to go where no man has gone before.

Jim, K6QE

DH2ID

I have never had a problem with windows. Ok, excuse me, I've got 7 and GWX Control Panel http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/... ;-)

Chris DL5NAM

Using 3 PC's here in shack. Every with Win 10, every with SSDR. No problem at all !
[most PC problems are located in front of the PC]

Mark_WS7M

Yup!

W7NGA

It has always occurred to me that many of these issues might be caused by drivers that do not follow specification. That is, the CAT and DAX drivers are broken somehow such that they do not necessarily install and uninstall per plan. It's a daunting task for Microsoft to craft an operating system that works with *all* hardware and software, when some of it may not meet standards. Apple would appear to have an easier path as the hardware is a known quantity. How many errant apps need be installed before something unforeseen and unanticipated takes place?

It should be incumbent upon Flex (and others) to identify these issues, determine why they are breaking after upgrades, and go back to the specifications to redesign a more robust application based on the vagaries of a distributed operating system with a gazillion installations. 

W7NGA  dan

Mark_WS7M

I have to be on Win10 for my work.  I could use another PC for SSDR and load Win7 but frankly it should (and it will) work on 10.  There are always rough points and this is one of them.

Win10 for me has been ok.  I've only had one SSDR **** up due to a Win10 update.  But GWX should help with that I think until Flex has time to make the drivers for CAT and DAX more resilient to the Win10 way of doing things.

Mark_WS7M

Completely agree Dan.  M$ has taken I think the only approach they could have:  Set a specification and leave it up to the driver developer to get it right.  

The downside to this is all the finger pointing between driver developers and M$ support.  But that would occur even if it was done other ways too.

I wrote software for and support a bio-med device that has an XYZ robot controlled by a commercially available PCI board.  The board of course has drivers.  This system has been running on Windows XP, Win7 and up since 2007.  All of a sudden in 2009 we started to see Blue Screen of Death when the robot was moving.  BUT we only saw this on ONE particular computer, an HP Z200.  All other computers even those from HP worked fine.

The problem was some idiot in our supply chain had purchased 500 of these things and had them sitting in a warehouse and HP would not take them back.

I suggested we just sell them even on eBay of we had to.  But no... We were required to get a group together and diagnose the issue.  We had HW people, driver, people and me working on this thing for close to 6 months.  We eventually solved it but it took getting all the way to the chip level and realizing that on the Z200 one of the signals we delayed by about 10ns from where the driver needed it to be.  So a driver change ended up being the fix.

But man... a lot of money and time was expended and there was lots of finger pointing all so we could use the 500 computers we'd purchased.  The concern was what if this happens on a Z300 or Z500 version?  I said, we should buy a small lot to test with first before we commit to by 500 or more units.  They didn't get that idea in purchasing.  If the order was not for millions they could not figure out how to process it.

Anyway I think we might have purchased the computers for say 25,000 (no idea really).  We could have probably sold them on eBay for $10 to 15k.  Not sure.  But I am sure we spent well over $250,000 in time, materials and shipping to fix the problem we could have avoided by taking a $10,000 loss.   Oh well... big business at it's best.

Burt Fisher

Problems with Windows 10:

1. Problems with video card.

Problems with 6300:

1. Restarts with no notice

2. Very susceptible to RF (unlike my 5000)

3. DAX needs to be stopped and re-started to work

4. CAT needs to be stopped and re-started to work

5. My DX060 gets better AM audio reports

6. When using FreeDV it hangs up

Windows 10 was free, the 6300 was not, you get what you pay for?

If it weren't for the panadapter.........

Jerry W2TXB

Every time I have seen DAX drop out (no waterfall), it has been because a Windows Update was out there waiting to be installed... almost always with Windows Defender. After I do the update, all is usually well again (not sure why). Maybe I should disable Defender and replace it with something better to see if the problem continues. If I do, I will try to post up the results.

Walt - KZ1F

Burt? Is that you Burt? And what have you done with the other Burt? The one that has always been a true blue defender of FRS.

Burt Fisher

It is me. It has come to my attention when I am not on the air as much as in the past 2 months, I have to re-learn how to make the 6300 work on Fldigi and other non voice modes. Thus the thought is occurring to buy a transceiver that I cannot use for a month and not have to re-learn. Plus I bought this to demo ham radio at school over WAN and I bet we will be into the next school year before we see WAN.

Walt - KZ1F

I mean no disrespect with this comment but you may well be right about WAN arrival. With that, using just (I hope) public domain knowledge, there are a lot of pieces that have to come together before WAN is ready. Is that effort almost done or will it begin in earnest after 1.6 ships? I suspect most people expect WAN to ship in February. I, further, suspect they will all be incredibly disappointed. At any rate Burt, that's where I'd expect to see it. To all those lighting the torches now, "Expect the worst and hope for the best". After all the lessons learned from the 'whiners' and the vociferous and vitriolic comments about being late etc, I sincerely hope, as a group, we will be better behaved this time around.

Michael Coslo

There really is no good reason that competent software people cannot make OS software that doesn't break the systems and programs on it.

Having a lot of professional experience with OSX and Windows, and personal experience with Linux, this every update breaking things is not in any way normal and inevitible. It's a Windows thing. 

Bob - WD8KND

Really Chris? I used to work IT before I retired. Do you really think this is my fault.

Chris DL5NAM

[most PC problems are located in front of the PC]   Y E S - 99% !!

If you buy a new car and the very old car tire not fit ... Is it a problem of the new car?
Same situation: graphics driver or any interface driver. If you  a developer of any software product - you have also take care every time for the right driver. Or your lost!
Developer get infos and W10 soft 18 month before we get as W10 user

(i start in early 80' with Control Data Cyber 760, Digital RT11 and Siemens 4004 - and at home with Apple II, TRS80 and Sinclair ZX80)

George KF2T

Mark, have you heard any rumblings about a WireTap update or replacement? I'd sure love to ditch the USB, too.

Bob - WD8KND

You're beyond a response. It's guys like you that discourage people from asking for help on here.

Michael Coslo

I've supported Windows, and OSX for as long as they have been around. And IBM mainframes long before that. Oddly enough, even though many users consider all the problems people have  (well 99 percent) with Windows to be the users fault, I simply don't make those mistakes on OS X or Linux systems.

This is a rough time for a lot of users, as on Windows 10, there is no choice of updating or not. It's a BOHICA situation. And Windows updates have always broken systems.  I am spending a lot of time fixing problems people are having, and all come right after an update.

With updates breaking systems on a very regular basis - you should see the Win-fldigi and softrock group's travails - I've become a big fan of Teamviewer.

But I've yet to find a problem that can be laid at the user's feet.

Nor is this a Flex problem. If the update situation doesn't stabilize, this is the way of the future. Break after break.

Don Agro

Does Sound Siphon from http://staticz.com help ?

Mark_WS7M

Don, I donno... I'll take a look.

Mark_WS7M

Well Don, that seems to work pretty well.  I'll check it out further.  Thanks!  And also thanks for the quick S/N update last night.  You are amazing!

Mark_WS7M

George.  Nothing heard on Wiretap.  If I do I'll let you know.

Mark_WS7M

Bob, don't take it personally.  I do agree that most PC problems are in front of the computer.  But without ANY doubt this Win10 update thing is a problem and it is not the direct fault of the operator.  So rest assured most of us are here to help and we understand you didn't push the "destroy my working system" button to cause this to happen.

There are certainly those people here that will talk us down for going to Win10 before it is fully baked.  In my case I have to.  I am supporting software that MUST run on Win10.

So I had to take the plunge.  I expect and plan to roll with the rough spots in the end I hope I can help others get through the rough spots.

I still believe that in this case Win10 is doing something specific with drivers and the Flex drivers for CAT and Dax are somehow just not playing right with the new requirements.  Not blaming Flex at all but hopefully when the next release comes out the drivers will be "certified" so to speak to work on Win10.

However in my experience with Windows even though you do everything right there is still that occasional strange case that nothing seems to illuminate.  

Anyway hang in there.  We are all in this together.

Walt - KZ1F

Chris, I don't know how you can possibly say that. That defies belief. Yes, there are users who know less (about WIndows) than, say, power users or developers, or sysadmins but that is what Windows is, the Volkswagon of pc operating systems; the consumer's OS. It has now been made public that, up until very recently (the new CEO) support and solidness in Windows took a back seat. This is where the Windows slur of "Never buy a .0 release of anything Microsoft came from. The user community figured it out very early on. However, one partial defense for Microsoft is that being the "people's OS" it had to work with every device, every driver anyone on the planet threw at it. This either isn't or wasn't the case with Apple...quite deliberately. As I believe it was Mark that pointed out, correctly, Apple made sure they controlled the supply chain. It was their OS, their motherboard, their device interface, their devices. In short, it was controllable. The wild wild west Windows is expected to operate in is a much different landscape.

Burt Fisher

There is zero chance WAN will be available in February.

My prediction:

20% chance April

50% chance July

75% chance September and that's as high as it gets because it may not be possible

Burt Fisher

Since you are so competent call Microsoft and Flex and offer your resume. I am amazed at those who haven't done it say it can be done.

Michael Coslo

To be precise, Apple writes their own drivers. That might be an avenue for Microsoft to take. I have always had many more driver problems with Microsoft, except in the few cases where a manufacturer refused to allow Apple to write one. But I do have a bin of peripherals that work on Macs, and Linux, but not on Windows.

And the problem with "Never use the first version" would be really bad if everyone did it! 8^)