I had problems when ver. 5 first came out blue screen and lockup. I think there was a problem with ver 4 and ver 5 on my machine at the same time. When I installed ver.5 I though it would remove ver.4, it did not. so I removed ver.5 everything worked. This time I removed everthing with device manager for ver.4 and re downloaded ver 5 and installed it. Everthing has been working good for about 60 days. Joe
Personally I am absolutely convinced that my USB lock up problem is caused by electrical interference from something else in the house. My station ( Davis VP2 ) is at a second home and whilst there’s no-one there it works perfectly but I just visited for 5 days and it crashed twice; previous to that it has worked without a hitch since our last major visit in September.
There are a number of posts on here suggesting the same thing. Have you tried a good USB cable with ferrites on it? (Looks like a snake that had a big lunch.)
Yes, I would say it is electrical interference that is the one of the causes
which explains why some people have a problem and others do not
Someone needs to tell Davis about this.
Yes tried the snake thing and to be honest it did seem to improve the situation; I fitted it at the same time as I relocated the PC to a different part of the house ( because we don’t have elecrical ring mains in France I decided to connect the PC to a different electrical spur to the weather station ) so I’m not sure which one has actually improved the situation. I also installed " logmein " on the computer so that I could remotely set it if it crashes whilst I am away but so far I have only had to use it once to do this in about 5 months; the main problem is as I said when I’m actually at the house ( when there’s obviously much increased electrical activity ) but it’s not as bad now as it used to be prior to ferrite cores / relocating.
I was having a rash of lockups with both VWS and WD under VirtualVP, first with driver version 4.4 and later with version 5.1. In desperation I searched and found this latest version (5.2.1), installed it, and haven’t had a single lockup since.
Don’t know it is the answer for everyone, but it sure worked for me.
VirtualVP has an option that if enabled will cause VirtualVP to reset the Davis/SiLabs USB driver when it detects that communications have been lost. Did you have that option enabled? I know that has solved the USB problem for many people.
Yup. Tried that; it didn’t help. My problem was that Windows would blue-screen and reboot with a USB driver error. Since I updated to the V5.2.1, I’ve had no problems. All is well for me, now, at least so far.
My 30-day trial for VirtualVP is almost up. Guess it’s time to purchase. I’ll likely get the startup app (whatever it’s called) as well.
No, I never thought it was VirtualVP that was the problem, but rather the USB drivers themselves. I had the same errors without VVP running and with either VWS, WD, or VPLive straight to the com port. I knew it wasn’t your apps causing the issue. I’m running off an IBM T40 Series laptop through a docking station with quite a few USB devices. I suspected a driver conflict somewhere.
Nevertheless, since upgrading to V5.2.1, which has been at least three weeks ago, I’ve had no problem.
I’m most anxious to get the weather station and apps off my laptop and onto a dedicated box; thus my interest in the appliance solution you are investigating.
I’m in the process of ordering the parts for the first batch. The tests went well. Even with a USB pen drive and a web cam drawing power from it, it’s still running 5 to 6 watts (mostly 5). My computer that is currently running my weather software (and will get that moved off to this new box) draws 3 times that much power WHEN IT’S TURNED OFF!!! It will be nice to turn that monster off when I’m not sitting in front of it. And I’ll be turning it off with the rocker switch on the power strip.
I had the 5.1 drivers make my XP Pro machine BSOD several times.
The Microsoft Debug Crash Analyser always listed the USB device driver used by CP210x as the cause.
Been okay however for several weeks on V4.40 from davisnet.
Just a FYI. I have a laptop (IBM Thinkpad) that acts ONLY to operate my Davis VP2 system (Weather link, Ambients weather software for web uploading (cant remember name)). Updates to the net (CWOP and Wunderground) 24/7/365. The computer has no serial port only USB’s. I bought a standalone serial I/O adapter to USB cable converter thingy with its own software driver as a standalone unit from a third party vendor. I connected my Serial Davis data logger (Weather Link) to this dummy serial interface and connected it to the virtual COM1 port (created by the USB to serial driver software). Turned off windows updates and the unit has operated flawlessly for 6 months without problems. There was one 5 day period where it shut down due to windows updates doing a restart and requiring a password but other than that I forget the computer is even there, with windows updates turned off, the computer gathers dust operating under my office desk. This has been a great solution.