Windows Spring Update (1803) Tips and Tricks

Larry Benoit

FYI, after installing Windows 10 1803 and SmartSDR 2.2.8 PC Audio did not work on a friend's laptop (although PC microphone worked normally). We fixed by changing the playback sample rate and bit depth (Sound > Playback > Properties > Speaker Properties > Advanced) and PC Audio was restored. It was initially set to 24/48 and changed to 16/48. Switched back to the previous setting and sound continued to work normally.  The SmartSDR interface with the Win10 sound subsystem must have been hosed during the update process. 

73,
Larry KB1VFU

Neal - K3NC

Larry

Thanks for this note, I will look for this in future cases!

73

Neal

IW7DMH, Enzo

Are there any workarounds when a device is missing at all?As you can see in the picture below I have only six DAX IQ channels.Thank you for any suggestion.
73' Enzo
iw7dmh

W8QB

Hi Tim and Neal K3NC,
Here is how I resolved the perplexing problem of "missing" or incorrectly labeled DAX device names.

Background: Every time I update to the latest release of SmartSDR I try to thoroughly uninstall the old version of SmartSDR before installing the new version.  My particular experience involves two computers.  One is a Mac Mini running Win10 natively under Bootcamp; the other computer is a Dell laptop running Win10.

I updated both computers to Win10 version 1803 as soon as 1803 became available.  Subsequently on May 27, I updated both computers to Win10 "2018-05 cumulative update".  I did not notice any issue with the DAX panel until yesterday evening when while using the DAX panel I inadvertently mouse clicked the bottom portion of the panel named "IQ stream 1".  I had not bothered with IQ streaming in the past, and in this instance, when I mouse clicked, the button for IQ stream 1 turned yellow in color followed immediately by a pop-up error message proclaiming that I had incurred a DAX "driver error".  At this point I went through various strategies trying to eliminate the error message and fix the bad driver.  Strategies included uninstalling, then re-installing SmartSDR v2.2.8 multiple times using variously three applications: Revo uninstaller, CCCleaner and Iobit uninstaller.  And yet, I was still left having to cope with the DAX driver pop-up error message.

The solution: In the final analysis the strategy that proved effective for me in eliminating the driver error pop-up was Neal's (above described) suggestion of re-naming a few INCORRECTLY LABELED DAX driver names.  The particular steps that eliminated the problem on both of my computers were as follows.

1. I opened the Windows Sound Control panel
2.  In the playback panel, right clicked and then removed the checkmark from "show disabled devices" which was to make it easier to focus my full attention on the mis-labeled problem DAX driver names.
3. Similarly in the recording panel, right clicked and then removed the checkmark from "show disabled devices."
4. As Neal indicated, located directly below each of the the BLACK DAX device names is "descriptive text" (the descriptive text is in light grey).   Altogether on each of my computers, I was now looking at a grand total of FOUR "IQ" named devices within the playback panel, and FOUR "IQ" named devices under the recording panel.  Curiously, even though I had updated Windows on both computers in the identical manner, and on the very same dates, the incorrect DAX device names varied slightly between my two computers.  

Here are some related photos.  The first two photos show the names of DAX devices as they originally appeared on one of my computers.  Photos 3 & 4 are screenshots of how the playback and recording panel IQ entries appear after the faulty labels were corrected to show the intended/proper labels.  After correctly the names of DAX devices--AND also rebooting--DAX functionality now seems to be working perfectly on my computers.  Importantly, what you see represented in below photos are what appeared on my particular computers, so others' results may vary from my results.

DAX panels BEFORE re-naming DAX devices...note how the fourth/bottom-most name is not consistent with the naming protocol for the other three DAX IQ devices.



Recording panel...same issue with bottom-most entry.




After changing the device names, I ended up with the following,






To summarize, using Revo, CCCleaner and iobit did not correct the problem of the pop-up DAX errors message.  Rather, on my machines, I solved the problem simply by editing names of a few DAX devices, then after rebooting, everything now works fine.

I'd be interested to know if others have had similar success with this simple strategy.

Ria

A friend of mine had issues and I helped him out. But there was a fundamental misunderstanding of how DAX device names work. 

In a nutshell, there are playback and recording devices. But in DAX they come in pairs. You have the regular device and you have a RESERVED device. My guess is that is done to pre-empt potential conflicts. 

For example, DAX audio TX is a playback device. IT will have a paired recording device called DAX  RESERVED AUDIO TX. 

Anyway he changed the reserved device rather than the proper non-reserved one, and wondered why it wasn't working. After changing it back, it worked. Just something to keep in mind.

IW7DMH, Enzo

During the last WPX contest I found another problem: despite having corrected the problem of the DAX error, as Neal taught us, and although my DAX-IQ drivers were correctly coupled, I realized that one of the two CW_Skimmer wasn't decoding any signal.
Doing some tests I found that the channel actually associated with the panadapter n. 2 of my SSDR was what I renamed as DAX IQ RX 3. So I deduce that there is an additional level of association between driver name and driver type. It should be the number but I can't find a way to find out what it is.
You should test each channel individually to find out this other issue.

Tim VE6SH

I have yet to install 1803. I have checked for updates through Win 10 on the three computers I have and the only downloads I get are updates for 1709. I was hoping to install 1803 when I had some time to deal with the issues that might arise rather than having it sprung on me! Is this a regional update by Microsoft?

Tim VE6SH

Greg N8GD

You can force an update by going to the following Microsoft web page:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Click on the "Update now" button towards the top of the screen and a Windows Upgrade Assistant file (,exe) will be downloaded to your PC.  Find that file (it is currently named "Windows10Upgrade9252.exe"), double click on it to run, and the process to upgrade will start.  Hopefully this will work outside the USA for you.

Neal Pollack, N6YFM

SUGGESTION:

Since Microsoft can not be trusted to always get updates correct and of high quality, Flex Radio can save a lot of support $$$ if they add a registry clean-up script to the installer for SmartSDR.
If you look at the volume of support calls and forum posts, the MS Windows Update has cost a lot of people a lot of time and frustration.   It appears to me that most of this is due to some corrupted DAX device names.   These items are stored in the registry.    The installer script for SSDR could easily be made to first scan for, and delete, ANY registry entry containing the DAX names listed earlier in this post. 

If that were done, then simply  reinstalling SSDR would solve the problem in well over 95% of customer issues.  So instead of Flex support getting exhausted, and customers spending multiple hours trying different things,  it would instead just be 10 minutes or less of "click to re-install SSDR".

Just my opinion.  I believe in working smart rather than hard.  We would no longer care how often MS gets their updates wrong.  The fix would be simple and automatic.

Cheers,

Neal
N6YFM