Post by wa4sca on Apr 25, 2016 8:09:39 GMT -5
Three years ago, I bought an AIMuhf analyzer to clear an item on my ham Bucket List: "What is my antenna really doing?" No question it does that. It worked fine except for one issue. It would only work on one elderly Dell laptop. On multiple other computers, including a Surface Pro, a white box desktop, and a WinBook, it would be detected and install, but the AIMuhf software would report that the unit was not responding. There is a test using a terminal program in the manual, and that also failed. Over time this covered WIN7, WIN8, and WIN10, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, with periodic updates of the FTDI drivers in case it somehow got fixed. Despite discussions with MS and Bob, I never got anywhere.
As you can imagine, this was frustrating, and also perplexing. Unlike the Prolific chips, FTDI chips have a reputation of just working. I did find mentions that in some cases, usually involving USB3 ports and/or 64-bit OS versions, that garbage about the chip could be written to the system which did not get corrected even by removing and reinstalling the driver. I didn't pay any attention since at least two computers I tried were USB2 32-bit, and did work with some other devices with FTDI chips.
Finally I decided to try the FTDI CDM Uninstall Utility. It removes EVERYTHING, and can be found here:
www.ftdichip.com/Support/Utilities/CDM_Uninst_GUI_Readme.html
In each case I ran the utility, took the default and had it do an uninstall, rebooted, installed the latest FTDI driver, rebooted, plugged in the AIMuhf, and shazaam, the software detected the analyzer perfectly after the OS installed it. Three for three computers, so now I have four usable computers. Needless to say, I am a very happy ham. My problem seems extreme and unusual, and I am still perplexed why so many different computers would have this problem when it works fine for others. For that matter, this is a one of a kind for me as well.
Since I have seen a couple of other questions about a similar problem I wanted to pass this on in case it can help someone else.
73s,
Alan
WA4SCA
As you can imagine, this was frustrating, and also perplexing. Unlike the Prolific chips, FTDI chips have a reputation of just working. I did find mentions that in some cases, usually involving USB3 ports and/or 64-bit OS versions, that garbage about the chip could be written to the system which did not get corrected even by removing and reinstalling the driver. I didn't pay any attention since at least two computers I tried were USB2 32-bit, and did work with some other devices with FTDI chips.
Finally I decided to try the FTDI CDM Uninstall Utility. It removes EVERYTHING, and can be found here:
www.ftdichip.com/Support/Utilities/CDM_Uninst_GUI_Readme.html
In each case I ran the utility, took the default and had it do an uninstall, rebooted, installed the latest FTDI driver, rebooted, plugged in the AIMuhf, and shazaam, the software detected the analyzer perfectly after the OS installed it. Three for three computers, so now I have four usable computers. Needless to say, I am a very happy ham. My problem seems extreme and unusual, and I am still perplexed why so many different computers would have this problem when it works fine for others. For that matter, this is a one of a kind for me as well.
Since I have seen a couple of other questions about a similar problem I wanted to pass this on in case it can help someone else.
73s,
Alan
WA4SCA