Very, Very Bad

[Captain_Colossus]

My replacement dongle arrived- and the problem appears to be worse, and even more bizarre.

My computer recognized the new dongle- at first. SB Pro PE ran, and then locked up moments later, emitting the "ding-dong, you don't have a dongle plugged in" chime. I restarted my computer, and now the computer doesn't recognize the dongle at all. Whereas I have the old dongle, which flashed red and green, this one doesn't flash at all, and appears dead in the USB slot. What could possibly be going on here? Now I'm a bit nervous if the copy protection means I can never play SB Pro.

[3Star]

It's seriously starting to look like you have a very dodgy computer, or at least USB drivers.

Got the latest and greatest?

NTM

[Captain_Colossus]

Computer is fairly new-

AMD 64 Athlon FX-55 with ATI Radeon X800 XT PE. I've never had a problem before, nor with the USB slots: I borrowed a friend's memory stick and had it plugged in there with no problem. Is the computer simply frying the dongles? They even have different symptoms.

[Shane]

Just an idea, but could there be a USB 1.1 vs USB 2.0 conflict with the dongle?

What I mean is, could the dongle be a USB 1.1 device, and some of the computers out there are running USB 2.0?

(It's been a while since I messed with my USB ports so my apologies if the version numbers I listed are incorrect)

[Captain_Colossus]

Well, I'll tell you I wouldn't wish this on anybody- I'm not interested in the $125.00 US spent on SB Pro if all eSim can do is offer a refund. I just want what everybody else has been patiently waiting for so long. And of course, I invested in the hardware upgrade specifically for this.

[Lone*star49]

...

Hey CC, revenge is mine says the LORD.. hehehe .. j/k

Really, Cush had somewhat of a same loading problem like what yours sounds like. He tried reloading it over and over and finally in Team Speak, he talked to Tony-DarkAngel, who talked him thru it and got it to work..

Come to TS and find DA..


Now, go in *Peace! to TS *j/k (it's the little devil in me.. lol)

But I mean it, go to TS, seek out DA..


Good luck


LS :wink:

[Captain_Colossus]

You mean either: the dongle went completely dead or there was a case of a red/green strobing LED with the dongle reported as malfunctioning?

[Lone*star49]

You mean either: the dongle went completely dead or there was a case of a red/green strobing LED with the dongle reported as malfunctioning?
...

I didn't stay/hear the converstation between them as they where fixing it, but it all comes down to a choice by you, and the odds are 50/50 that if you go to TS find Tony/DarkAngel and take it from there, that your problem will be fixed, or won't..

But, it's 100% dead in the water where you're at now..


Take a chance my friend, Columbus did.. lol

Take a leap of faith for me.. hehehe


LS

[RENEGADE-623]

I would think it would have to be a driver issue with your puter. one might be but hard to fathom two dongles in a row being bad.

[Captain_Colossus]

Yeah, I hope so. The failure of two sticks seems rather unlikely.

[3Star]

That's what I meant by latest and greatest: The drivers, not the machine.

NTM

[Ssnake]

It may not necessarily always be a driver. This could be a case where voltage spikes from the powergrid or some other source "contaminates" the USB ports, and maybe the other connected USB devices are more robust when it comes to currents exceeding the voltage specifications. But I'm speculating here.

As soon as I am back from my current trip, I'll contact Wibu support staff and see what they recommend in this case. In the meantime I recommend testing the next replacement with a different computer (ideally a notebook since their batteries are very good protection against surges, spikes, and brown-outs that the power grid may emit.

[RENEGADE-623]

maybe try connecting to a friends puter and see if it recognises it might help? At least would elimiunate or confirm that it the dongle that is messed up.

[Captain_Colossus]

It may not necessarily always be a driver. This could be a case where voltage spikes from the powergrid or some other source "contaminates" the USB ports, and maybe the other connected USB devices are more robust when it comes to currents exceeding the voltage specifications. But I'm speculating here.


That's probably the leading theory that Al Delaney and I have discussed- a larger load such as a mouse or joystick may be obscuring the problem.

[Bluewings]

Maybe you should apologize to the "lying reptile" ... :twisted:
Fate , Karma ....

Cheers . :3starSK:

[Enrage]

Could it be caused low power?
My brother went through 4 hard drives in a year because he lived in an area that's power would run not put out enough volts.

[OilBucket]

Uh oh, I hope I dont have this problem as when I bought a USB mouse, It wouldnt work in my 2nd and last USB slot. I had joystick hooked up at the time when tried. I feel panic coming on lol

[Captain_Colossus]

I don't want to stir a panic; I think the vast majority of you will be ok, at least until Codemeter sticks aren't available anymore and you have some kind of problem down the road. It may just be something that a nice, expensive powerstrip with better voltage clipping or something would manage in my case. I travel back and forth between the US and the UK, but my permanent US residence has old outlets, and some of them don't have a ground- I wonder if that also could be the problem.

At any rate, be assured that Nils Hinrichsen and Al Delaney have been quite gracious in this matter, and they would rather not leave someone high and dry if they can help it.

[Lone*star49]

I don't want to stir a panic; I think the vast majority of you will be ok, at least until Codemeter sticks aren't available anymore and you have some kind of problem down the road. It may just be something that a nice, :arrow: expensive powerstrip with better voltage clipping or something would manage in my case. I go back and forth regularly between the US and the UK, but my residence in the US has old outlets, and some of them don't have a ground- I wonder if that also could be the problem.

At any rate, be assured that Nils Hinrichsen and Al Delaney have been quite gracious in this matter, and they would rather not leave you high and dry.
...

CC, Monster Cable makes just such a device, it's called:

Monster Power Signature AVS2000

Basically what it does is, it takes the power from the wall, is self grounding, for old type wall sockets, takes the uneven power spikes and dives from as low as 90 to a high of 130 and cleans up the power and sends it pure at 120, no matter the dirty voltage comin in, it stores and controls it, least it goes below or above those settings IIRC and then shuts down, saving any equipment plugged into it, like your power strips.

I don't have that kind of power problem in the PC room, as I use the AVS2000 for all our music and TV components (mixed), that's the big-load area, but I use a power surge plug in, with "filters" for both digital or analog that cleans the dirty-volatage to the PC, and was around 90 dollars..



LS

[Captain_Colossus]

Thanks for the tip LS, I'll look into that. So- you and Al Delaney would conjure up bad juju by implicating yourself in my remedy- you are defying the karmic balance or some such thing. How Pol Pot got away with it while I eat this kind of justice is a mystery...

[Lone*star49]

Thanks for the tip LS, I'll look into that. So- you and Al Delaney would conjure up bad juju by implicating yourself in my remedy- you are defying the karmic balance or some such thing. How Pol Pot got away with it while I eat this kind of justice is a mystery...
...

eh?

To each his own, simple.. lol or better, ~ Do on to others, as you would have them do onto you ~


LS :wink:


PS. One of our court reporters brought us back (as a gift) a real Voodo-doll from downtown, dark, New Orleans, while on a case down there, for just such cases.. hehehe

[plummerx]

I dunno if this will help, but here's 2 different usb problem I had recently:

Usb ports stopped working completely. everyhting showed ok in device manager, but nothing worked.

After hours of tinkering with hubs and bios settings, i just removed all the usb devices in device manager, root hub, host controllers, everything. Rebboted and let windows reinstall them. problem solved.

A while back, on another machine, the usb ports would just periodically stop working, but alwwyas function on re-boot. This perplexed me for some weeks untill I realized that every time the compressor on my small beer fridge kicked in (it was one outlet away on the same circuit) the momentary voltage drop would knock out the usb ports. Moved fridge, problem solved.

[Ssnake]

I have a VHS video signal digitizer to create MPGs from old tapes, and once installed, it permanently reserves a USB port for its own use (until you uninstall the software). That alone is bloody annoying, but what's more important about it is that this indicates that software (problems) can have (semi)permanent changes in the USB configuration that are not quite obvious.

I don't know why this video converter needs to have the USB port reserved for its exclusive use, and it doesn't matter. What counts is that other software could create similar effects without the user knowing about it. This is very, very difficult to troubleshoot since the symptoms can be rather obscure.

[Homer]

Capt,
Check the BIOS settings to see if there is an option to assign an IRQ for USB or for IOAPIC and look for any options that contains the words "spread spectrum"... try it with these settings enable.

[Captain_Colossus]

Thanks for the suggestion.

The solution required a 40 ft extension cord to a grounded outlet. Al Delaney asked about my USB card under suspicions about a lethal voltage running through the ports. That got me thinking about ESD sensitive devices and that the dongle looked to be no more than a small integrated circuit- my other USB peripherals demonstrated no problem at all, so I hadn't considered how much this could be directing my troubleshooting away from the common power source, but sure enough...

The graphics are first rate: even the best screenshots look washed out in comparison an do not demonstrate the depth in the terrain. The M1 drive sprocket rotating the track is something which has to be seen to be believed.

[Ssnake]

:shock: Wow... I think it wouldn't even be legal in Germany for an electrician to create non-grounded wall plugs in a house. No wonder.

Glad it works now. 8)

[VegasGeorge]

If you're running XP, then I'd try deleting all the usb drivers out of Device Manager, and rebooting the PC. XP will rebuild all the drivers automatically. I've seen that fix a number of weird USB symptoms in the past.