Teensy 3.1 stopped being recognized by my PC

[macdonaldtomw]

Hi everyone,

I have a Teensy 3.1 that was working really well up until last night, but now my PC and the Teensy Loader, and Arduino IDE can't seem to communicate with the Teensy any more.

Here are my specs:

Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit OS
Teensy 3.1 (product code MK20DX256)

I was going through the tutorials with the LEDs, substituting 3 single color LEDs for the RGB one in the tutorial.

I know that the modified blink example is loaded onto the Teensy at the moment because when I plug in the USB cable, my LED on pin 21 starts blinking.

In browsing through the other topics that have been posted, as well as the troubleshooting section, I have not yet been able to find a way to restore communication between my Teensy and my PC.

When I try to upload a sketch using Arduino IDE, I get the following message:

Please press the RESET BUTTON on your Teensy to upload your sketch. Auto-reboot only works if the Teensy is running a previous sketch.

Here is the verbose log from that attempt:

View attachment Teensy Loader verbose log - attempted sketch upload from Arduino IDE.txt

Here is what I have tried so far:

- Rebooting computer (several times)
- Changed USB ports (several times)
- Re-installed TeensyDuino (several times)
- Re-installing serial USB driver (several times)
- Uninstalling Arduino IDE and trying to get Teensy 3.1 recognized in Teensy Loader only
- Holding down reset button while plugging in USB while Teensy Loader is running (several times)
- Create a new windows user and tried using new profile to run Teensy Loader - still didn't recognize
- Uninstalled all HID drivers (to the point of losing mouse and keyboard functionality). Restarted windows, at which point windows automatically re-installed my keyboard and mouse drivers. This resulted in the same list of 8 drivers in device manager as before.

Here is a screenshot showing the verbose log from the Teensy Loader, as well as my device manager HID devices, and hardware IDS property dialogue box for each HID device.

Is the Teensy Loader looking for the wrong device? My device manager lists 5 devices that all have the same hardware IDS info that verbose lists, namely:

vid:046D
pid:C31C
ver:6400



I have determined that the item matching vid:046D pid:c31c ver:6400 is my keyboard, as shown in the next screenshot:



According to this support page, the HalfKay device info should be:

vid:16C0
pid:0478

I certainly don't have any HID devices or USB controller devices that match those parameters!

Why is the Teensy Loader trying to communicate with my keyboard instead of the Teensy?

 

[stevech]

My Win 7 64 bit occasionally gets into a state that only rebooting windows will cure. It happens when I put faulty code on a Teensy 3 and sometimes the IDE/loader and Windows USB enumerator are hosed up.
Restarting the loader and IDE doesn't cure it; only a windows reboot.

 

[macdonaldtomw]

UPDATE:

After disabling all HID device drivers with vid:046D, the verbose log doesn't list any HID devices:

View attachment 1604

I also tried starting Windows in safe mode. Device manager still didn't see the HalfKay HID device. Tried the above mentioned suggested solutions in safe mode as well, to no avail.

While in safemode, I fired up the Arduino IDE and tried uploading a sketch through the Teensy Loader, which gave me the following error message:

Error communicating with Teensy Loader

At least I have Arduino giving me a different message! Probably has something to do with being in safe mode.

View attachment 1605

Here is the verbose log from that attempt: View attachment 1606

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Assuming you're using a good USB cable, I'd say the odds are your Teensy died an unnatural death.

If this isn't the same USB cable that worked previously, please check the cable. It's surprisingly common for these no-communication problems to turn out to be USB cables sold for cell phone charging, where the cable has only the 2 power wires but not the 2 data wires.

There are a few quick voltage measurements, but after all this troubleshooting you've already done, there's probably not much point. When you're sure the cable is ok, please email me directly (paul at pjrc dot com) with a link to this forum thread. We'll get you a replacement.

 

[PaulStoffregen]

Regarding safe mode and "Error communicating with Teensy Loader", I should probably explain a bit about how this works, in case anyone later finds this thread searching for such info.

The Arduino IDE and Teensy Loader run as separate programs on your PC, which is probably pretty apparent since they're different windows and when you quit one, the other stays. You can probably also see they're separate software using the Task Manager or a variety of other ways.

They communicate with each other using localhost networking. That's pretty much the same as regular internet connections, except a special IP number, 127.0.0.1 is used, which only allows connections and communication between programs running on the same computer. Normally this all happens automatically and invisibly (except for a bunch of stuff printed into the Verbose Info window).

But if you're running in safe mode, all networking functions may be disabled. I've also see a couple cases where people had very messed up Windows installs with networking problems, where part of all of the networking drivers were corrupted or uninstalled. It's an extremely rare problem, but it's happened....

The other case where the localhost communication comes up is overly aggressive firewall software, particularly Zone Alarm. Why you would ever want a firewall to block or pop up dialog boxes to warn you about 2 programs running solely on your own computer is a mystery to me.

Windows provides other ways to do inter-process communication, but they're complex to use and they're not supported on Macintosh and Linux (which each have other ways that don't work on Windows). I used localhost networking to coordinate the programs because it's fairly simple and because it works on all 3 operating systems. Or at least it works when localhost networking is available, which is pretty much always, unless you've got a silly firewall or you're running in safe mode or some other way where the usual networking drivers aren't available.

 

[macdonaldtomw]

Thanks for the quick reply Paul! I'll be sending you an email in a second.

Just out of curiosity, how come my verbose logs in the Teensy Loader were showing the keyboard HID number? Was the Teensy Loader mistaking my keyboard for a Teensy?

Also, another update:

I tried connecting my Teensy to my work computer, and it didn't show up either. My work computer is running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit OS. Here is the verbose log from those attempts:

View attachment log.txt

 

[PaulStoffregen]

I see you've got version Teensyduino 1.17. That's fine for testing, but please do install 1.18 before you start working on a real project. 1.18 fixes a lot of issues for Teensy 3.1.

Teensy Loader prints a lot of stuff to the verbose info log, including info about the non-Teensy HID interfaces it sees. Someday I'm going to add even more info. No one thing solves every problem, and when a board is dead and just not responding at all, no amount of extra info will help. But for other tough problems, that extra info somethings helps a lot.

 

[Tuetensosse]

Solution?

UPDATE:

After disabling all HID device drivers with vid:046D, the verbose log doesn't list any HID devices:

View attachment 1604

I also tried starting Windows in safe mode. Device manager still didn't see the HalfKay HID device. Tried the above mentioned suggested solutions in safe mode as well, to no avail.

While in safemode, I fired up the Arduino IDE and tried uploading a sketch through the Teensy Loader, which gave me the following error message:

At least I have Arduino giving me a different message! Probably has something to do with being in safe mode.

View attachment 1605

Here is the verbose log from that attempt: View attachment 1606

Is there any solution for your problem? At the moment I got the same problems with 3! different Teensys (all different USB Cables). They are physically not accessible so I can not push the reboot button. During the Upload of the sketch Windows tells me, that the Teensys are recognized as HID Device and then they all disappear .

I tried the solutions above (and also the solutions mentioned here: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/troubleshoot.html -> except the reset button!) but no one helped
Any ideas ?

Teensy Loader 1.20
Arduino IDE 1.06
Windows 64 bit
Teensy 3.1

 

[Tuetensosse]

Is there any solution for your problem? At the moment I got the same problems with 3! different Teensys (all different USB Cables). They are physically not accessible so I can not push the reboot button. During the Upload of the sketch Windows tells me, that the Teensys are recognized as HID Device and then they all disappear .

I tried the solutions above (and also the solutions mentioned here: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/troubleshoot.html -> except the reset button!) but no one helped
Any ideas ?

Teensy Loader 1.20
Arduino IDE 1.06
Windows 64 bit
Teensy 3.1

Maybe that's the problem:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/

 

[raphaelcno]

Maybe that's the problem:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/

This problem seems to be related to FTDI chips, but the Teensy doesn't contain such a chip.