Windows 10 and Arduino problems

The latest preview build of Windows 10 (can't remember the release number, but it was released in the last few days) caused some very strange problems with my printer electronics (RAMPS and Arduino) which seem to be down to an issue with the USB serial driver. YMMV depending if the issue only affects specific USB hardware, but here's what happened in case anyone else hits the same problem.

I've been running the Windows 10 preview on my main PC (with a dual boot of Windows 7 to fall back on in case of problems), on Saturday night I downloaded the latest update without apparent problems. Sunday morning my printer froze 4 times during a simple 45 minute print (it resumed when I paused, and resumed from Pronterface), not knowing the cause I decided to give it a full electrical and mechanical service, after which I recalibrated my Z height and tried to update Marlin with the new Z height, but Marlin failed to load. The code compiled ok, but seemed to fail at the end of the upload with an "averdude checksum error", fortunately I have a spare Arduino here and testing on that gave the same error with Marlin (my version, or the default), but smaller sketches worked without problems. At that point I began to suspect the serial driver and double checked that the update hadn't changed any of the handshake settings (it hadn't, that I could see), then I tried Windows 7 and voila, problem gone.

Without spare hardware, and another version of Windows, this would have been devilish to troubleshoot, so hopefully this helps someone.

---

Tim

Printers:
Prusa i3 (plywood box frame)
RAMPS 1.4 and Arduino Mega

Mendel 90 (sturdy)
Smoothieware

My RepRap Blog

I can confirm the same issue, the smaller sketching working, the checksum error and the pauses. My Windows 8 PC works fine. It also appears that a verification fail on reprogramming the RAMPS board from Windows 10 fails at the same location every time byte 0x2be2 although I doubt that will be similar to everyone. Earlier today I flashed the bootloader and everything with an AVRisp thinking that there was some issue with that only to later find out its only my Windows 10 Machine. I am glad to see someone else confirm it before I went crazy thinking it was a hardware issue on my PC.

I'm talking to Microsoft support about this, so I'll update here when there's a fix.

See this thread (I have same problem) [answers.microsoft.com]

Yes, that's the thread I started with MS.

Microsoft have advised they were able to reproduce the problem and diagnose the cause (they don't tell us what it was), the next Windows 10 update should have the fix.

fantastic, same here and I were thinking I had dead hardware, until I tried it in win7 too. in the original windows 10 build I could print OK but there may still have been some pauses, but in this build it is useless. hope the fix comes out soon.

A new arduino driver got installed with cura 15.9.... I bet its a driver issue. Worth a try.

---

My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]

Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Just tried to flash with new Cura driver same problem. It must be a com port issue with Windows 10 everything flashed fine with same Marlin build on windows 7. I guess we will have to wait for a new build of Windows 10 for a fix.