[daws0n]

Bah hum bug - I went to try out my new headphones today and my E1 DAC has stopped working!
 
Same error across 3 machines (both XP and Win7 x64 based) - error code 10, unable to start device. It was working fine on all 3 computers until today - swapping the USB lead and driver uninstall / reinstall has made no difference. It's recognized during initial installation when setups prompts to plug in the DAC but will not start or appear as a usable device for Windows to use afterwards!
 
Luckily toslink is working fine, so I can still listen to my music OK through soundcard's toslink output. But, there is it appears that the USB input has failed somehow - I cannot see an unrelated problem could cause this across 3 machines at the same time.
 
Is this a common/known issue? Grounds for an RMA?
 
Merry Christmas everyone
 
Screenshot here:
http://www.dawsonspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/e1fault.jpg

 

[marone]

Bah hum bug - I went to try out my new headphones today and my E1 DAC has stopped working!

Same error across 3 machines (both XP and Win7 x64 based) - error code 10, unable to start device. It was working fine on all 3 computers until today - swapping the USB lead and driver uninstall / reinstall has made no difference. It's recognized during initial installation when setups prompts to plug in the DAC but will not start or appear as a usable device for Windows to use afterwards!

Luckily toslink is working fine, so I can still listen to my music OK through soundcard's toslink output. But, there is it appears that the USB input has failed somehow - I cannot see an unrelated problem could cause this across 3 machines at the same time.

Is this a common/known issue? Grounds for an RMA?

Merry Christmas everyone

Screenshot here:
http://www.dawsonspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/e1fault.jpg

Try this on a friends machine at another location, or at work. If many machines are noting the same error then it is very likely an issue with the USB input chip on the DAC failing.

If this were one machine I would have suggested a reinstall of the OS after moving all needed files, but the error on 3 boxes indicates otherwise.

Could be a virus in the USB device as well. Failure is my first guess.

As always the very first thing to do is turn everything off, wait one minute, and reboot.

 

[daws0n]

Made some progress but my findings are very strange indeed! On two of the computers Ive got it working via USB. BUT it only works on ONE particular usb port!! How strange is that?? Regardless of cable used and restarts etc this is 100% repeatable...

On 3 of the 4 usb ports, I get error code 10... On the 4th the dac is recognised and works as normal over usb. I have even gone as far as reflashing the firmware (successfully) today, but it still won't work on the majority of ports.

How weird is that?!

 

[marone]

Made some progress but my findings are very strange indeed! On two of the computers Ive got it working via USB. BUT it only works on ONE particular usb port!! How strange is that?? Regardless of cable used and restarts etc this is 100% repeatable...

On 3 of the 4 usb ports, I get error code 10... On the 4th the dac is recognised and works as normal over usb. I have even gone as far as reflashing the firmware (successfully) today, but it still won't work on the majority of ports.

How weird is that?!

That IS weird. It could be an XP driver issue or just a glitch. OS' are so complex these days that the best solution is often to simply turn everything off and re-start.

Could be an IRQ or USB conflict.

You could uninstall USB devices one at a time, but that has risks. Still, would help you find out if a conflict is the source.

I assume you have anti-virus installed and running to clean out any bugs.

 

[daws0n]

Both of these computers are not connected to the internet so the possbility of a virus hitting either (yet alone both) are next to 0.
 
Never seen anything like it really... The DAC is working 100% at the moment over usb, but as soon as switch ports.. Error code 10 (Device unable to start). So weird, I've not seen anything like it.
 
I'm going to test it with a old XP laptop to see if the symptoms are also present there, and I've got a powered USB hub to fiddle with too.

 

[Baxide]

Go into Device Manager -> Sound Video and Game controllers. Right click on the USB controller inside there and un-install it. Then reboot the PC. Plug in DAC via USB again and let the PC re-install the correct driver.
Check also if you are seeing any yellow warning triangles in the Device Manager -> Universal Serial Bus Controller. Right click on those as well and un-install them. Reboot and let Windows re-install the correct drivers as before.
 
What you are experiencing is that two audio drivers are clashing with each other after being assigned to individual USB ports. This can happen if you used another USB audio device recently that also uses the same USB chip set but with different USB driver releases.The only way to correct that is a re-install of the offending driver.

 

[daws0n]

I have tried that (+disabling and re-enabling the offending device). Also, I hooked up the keyboard & mouse via ps2 adapters and uninstalled every USB controller listed in device manager - no change after restart.
 
FWIW, I haven't been able to get it working again on my main Windows 7 computer at all. It just stopped working one day, nothing was changed setup wise. The only sound devices that are present in the other two computers are PCI cards that have been there for a long time. I will try again though, but I don't see how it's a o/s driver issue. However, I can't see how it's a hardware issue either as it's working on one of the ports! I have a couple of xp based machines that have never used the DAC before that I will try it with that too.
 
Thanks for your help.

 

[arcorob]

  I have tried that (+disabling and re-enabling the offending device). Also, I hooked up the keyboard & mouse via ps2 adapters and uninstalled every USB controller listed in device manager - no change after restart.
 
FWIW, I haven't been able to get it working again on my main Windows 7 computer at all. It just stopped working one day, nothing was changed setup wise. The only sound devices that are present in the other two computers are PCI cards that have been there for a long time. I will try again though, but I don't see how it's a o/s driver issue. However, I can't see how it's a hardware issue either as it's working on one of the ports! I have a couple of xp based machines that have never used the DAC before that I will try it with that too.
 
Thanks for your help.

Don't disable the device. DELETE the device. sounds wrong , right ? Its not. You can delete any device in device manager and then reboot. That forces the system to recognize it as "new hardware" and install the device driver for it. It will install the latest one so any conflicts SHOULD go away.  Delete the sound card stuff too.
 
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000870.htm

 

[daws0n]

Now I am getting somewhere! Deleting the device/restarting did not do anything, but I noticed something on-screen when plugging the usb cable in. In the systray, a balloon tip immediately recognised it as an ASUS ESSENCE XONAR ONE but a few seconds later the device changed to "USB Audio Device" and refused to start (Error code 10 once more).
 
There were no drivers to "roll back" too, but I tried to update the drivers manually and to see if there was anything else I could choose - and there lies the problem!
 

 
 
I don't know where that driver has come from, or why it has not reared it's head until now - but it's obviously over riding the native asus STU device that should be used. Weirdly, windows reports that the asus driver is NOT digitally signed which may explain why it is not using it as it's first choice...
 
For every single USB port I have had to manually "update" the driver, but now it is working on all the ports I have tried Now onto the W7 machine, fingers crossed the same fix applies.
 
Thank you guys for your advice and encouragement, I doubt I would of persisted with out it.

 

[daws0n]

New issues with W7 x64 machine... Applied same fix (manually updating driver to asus xonar STU) but now I get a new error code
 
Windows cannot verify the digital signature for the drivers required for this device. A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source. (Code 52)

 

[arcorob]

Have you tried installing the latest driver from ASUS that should be there (check your version and point to the new driver anyway)
 
http://support.asus.com/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=21&s=2&m=Xonar%20Essence%20STU&os=30&ft=4&f_name=EssenceSTU_7_0_11_8_Win7.zip#EssenceSTU_7_0_11_8_Win7.zip

 

[daws0n]

Yes Ive made sure Im in the latest version. Manually uninstalling the driver via device manager along with multiple reinstalls of the driver suites has finally cleared it up!

Still weirded out by it though, how strange that its happened to 3 computers at once.

Thanks all

 

[arcorob]

Yes Ive made sure Im in the latest version. Manually uninstalling the driver via device manager along with multiple reinstalls of the driver suites has finally cleared it up!

Still weirded out by it though, how strange that its happened to 3 computers at once.

Thanks all

This will be a stretch but...there is always a BUT
 
did it start last Tuesday or Wednesday ? Do you have windows update set for automatic ? I ask because Tuesday is PATCH Tuesday at Microsoft and might have pushed out some patch to USB drivers. Doubtful but one never knows...generally it is security patches and stuff...But I would do some searches on patch Tuesday..generally though its the second Tuesday of each month
 
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/its-microsoft-patch-tuesday-december-2013/.

 

[daws0n]

It did cross my mind that it may of been related to Windows Update, but two of the computers rarely go online... Just one of things I guess, if I find the cause I'll be sure to post!

 

[tawilson007]

I was having a similar problem after upgrading to Windows 8.1 64-bit. Sony PHA-1 worked fine on Windows 7 64-bit, but when i tried installing on new Windows 8 install, the drivers automatically installed by Windows didn't work. It showed up as a HID device, yellow exclamation point, error code 10.
 
So I disabled, enabled, uninstalled, reinstalled, etc. Finally I uninstalled the device and checked the box on the prompt that said "delete the drivers for this device" or whatever the only checkbox on the prompt says. I turned off/on the PHA-1, and it installed with the correct PHA-1 "audio device" instead of the Sony HID device which is what it did previously.
 
I also tried to prevent Windows from automatically installing drivers for me through the advanced system settings tabs, but that didn't actually seem to do anything. Just FYI if that made a difference, I don't know.