[Elecraft] K3 firmware update failure

[Al Gulseth]

The first cardinal rule when a peripheral or device quits working under a 
Windows OS: check/reinstall the driver and look for anything that might have 
changed in software. I cringe at the number of modems, sound cards, etc. 
which have been thrown in the trash by people who didn't understand the 
process. "My [insert device here] quit working. I went to Best Buy etc. and 
bought a new one. It works so the old one must have been bad."

By installing the new device a new device driver was installed DUUHHH!! There 
is a good chance the driver or something in the OS was corrupted or 
incompatable, rendering the original device useless. (The classic related to 
this was a few years ago when some users reported receiving blue screens 
after a windows update was released. Investigation proved it to be an 
incompatability of the update with a certain piece of -- malware!)

73, Al

On Mon March 30 2015 11:01:53 am Tony Estep wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 8:02 AM, GDR <kt5d at charter.net> wrote:
> > ...This is the same computer I have been using all along with all of my
> > Elecraft equipment and it worked last time,,,
>
> ========================
> I had a Windows 7 laptop that ran my station perfectly for years. Then one
> day it would not send CW to my K3. I tried new cables, new drivers, new CW
> software, etc. etc. I figured that the USB hardware had failed. But one of
> my kids is an MSEE in charge of a huge network of servers and clients, and
> he said that it was probably a Windows update that had hosed something in
> the USB control chain. So I upgraded to Win 8.1, and sure enough,
> everything came back to life.
>
> So maybe the same thing happened in your case -- you had a combination of
> hardware and drivers that somehow wouldn't play with some update that came
> since the last time you tried it. Anyway, you're up and running, which is
> the important thing.
>
> 73, Tony KT0NY
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