1747-UIC driver issues

Hello all! Having a bit of trouble getting my 1747-UIC installed on some new laptops we recently ordered.

Got the drivers from AB and had successfully installed them on some older, XP laptops, but they won't load on the new machines we got.

New machines are running Windows 7 Professional x64.

If I plug in the 1747-UIC, I get the install driver message, point to the folder, it says no driver found. If I try to run the FTDIUNIN.EXE from the folder, I get an error message saying that c:\windows\system32\ftdiun2k.ini is not found. The folder comes with a file with that name, so I tried copying it into sys32 folder and still get the same message.

I have read numerous other threads on this topic and they all seem to be about getting rslinx to work with the UIC. This is not the problem I'm having. I haven't even gotten that far yet. I cannot get the device to be recognized as the AB DH485 device that it should pop up as.

Any help would be great as our new computers are pretty useless if they can't connect to our PLCs. Thanks!

Might it have something to do with running x64? Not sure if that would cause it, just a suggestion. I know I have no problem with it working on x32.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=62298&page=1

The third post in that topic says that it should work fine in both x86 and x64.

I'm not having any luck getting Windows to see it though. Even if I point to the rslinx folder. No matter what I point to, I get the error that Windows could not find a driver.


EDIT: If I download the D2XX drivers from ftdichip and point the update to that folder, it installs as a "USB Serial Converter" I also now have a "USB Serial Port" that does not install (stays with exclamation point), and does not give me an update option. Restarting now to see if anything changes.

EDIT2: After restarting, the USB Serial Port moved into "Ports (COM & LPT)" under a new "USB Serial Port (COM 3)" Working on seeing if I can get RSLinx to do anything with that now..

Okay so I got it kinda installed that way and I configured RSLinx to do the whole DF1 thing and it seems to work when the device manager picks up the device.

The problem I'm having now is that the device manager doesn't always pick up my 1747-UIC. Sometimes when I plug it in, the device manager picks it up as an unidentified device. Once it does this, it's stuck. I have to reboot the computer in order to remove it. Unplugging the device does not remove the listing from the device manager and scanning for hardware changes locks up mmc.exe.

This seems to happen completely randomly. I've tried different usb ports, tried booting with the cable in and out of the computer/plc.. same thing. Some times when I plug it in, it works great, some times when I plug it in I have to reboot in order to try again.

If it worked more often than not, I could probably live with this.. but it happens about an equal amount of times either way. Am I doing something wrong?

I received your PM and I will try to help here so if someone has the same issue later we may also help them...

It sounds like you have a bad cable not the driver (now that you have it installed) you should be able to open your device manager and plug in the cable, when you do this your screen should blink, this means your pc has found new hardware and its loading

If you plug is in and it does NOT blink you have a hardware issue...

1) Can you plug the cable into another machine a see if it loads every time? if yes then its your PC

2) If it does not load every time try squeezing the end of the cable, there are a few slides in the end of the USB cable that all have to make good contact, if they do not then it may not be getting the power (5v) so your PC will never see the hardware

Who did you buy the cable from ? we have a life time replacement if you bought it from us

After you get it working try this for setup for a 64bit W7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWgu1jdAPkE

Best regards
Mark

I believe we ordered this cable from Amazon. I'd have to ask our purchasing dept to be sure, but I will certainly pass them along to your site as I also think it's a bit cheaper than we paid Amazon. We'll be needing a few more of these cables if I can get this one to work.

After hacking at it some more last night, I think I may have found the problem.. or at least, I think so..

My device does not actually light up at all until I try to connect to it with RSLogix, so I've been looking at the device manager as I plug and unplug it to see if the computer sees it.

What I believe to be the problem is that the ports on the right side of our laptops are all USB 3.0 ports. These are the only ones I've been trying it on. But yesterday I decided to try it on the left side ports and it seems to work perfectly every time (so far). The only difference is that the ports that work occasionally are 3.0 ports and the ports that work all the time are 2.0 ports.

I'll keep trying it through the day and see if it keeps working, but I'm hoping that's what the problem was. Thanks for all of the help. Hopefully if someone else has this issue they might stumble upon this and save a little headache.

ericswb said:

My device does not actually light up at all until I try to connect to it with RSLogix, so I've been looking at the device manager as I plug and unplug it to see if the computer sees it.

What I believe to be the problem is that the ports on the right side of our laptops are all USB 3.0 ports. These are the only ones I've been trying it on. But yesterday I decided to try it on the left side ports and it seems to work perfectly every time (so far). The only difference is that the ports that work occasionally are 3.0 ports and the ports that work all the time are 2.0 ports.

Click to expand...

The lights on the cable are read and write, so they will not light up until RSLinx driver starts running, but the cable will have power and your PC will see it once its plugged in so it should show up in your device manager.

Most of the USB ports 3.0 are backward compatible but not all, some PC's have 2.0 and 3.0, the cables are 2.0 so yes this would be a issue if you had a 3.0 only

Doesn't necessarily apply here, but we've had trouble using USB 3.0 ports with VMWare images. A USB 2.0 device plugged into a 3.0 port will not reliably connect to the VM.