Laser worked fine 2 days ago with Lightburn 1.4.0. Went to go cut the same thing today, saw the software upgrade to 1.4.01, went ahead and installed it, along with the FTDI driver. Lightburn won’t connect now, get the dreaded “Waiting for connection”. This is on Windows 11 using an Atomstack X7 Pro.
Besides the numerous reboots, other things I have tried;
Uninstall/Reinstall of Lightburn software.
Uninstalled all ports and their drivers in windows device manager
Reinstalled the CH340 drivers (ones mentioned in an atomstack install thread)
Confirm that a COM port is getting created for the laser in Device Manager when powered on. Check that it’s being removed when powered off. Can you take a screenshot of Device Manager showing the port?
Full screenshot of LightBurn. Please have Laser window showing.
If I unplug the USB cable from the PC and then plug it back in, it appears to start normally.
I turned on “hidden devices” view in device manager, and I see no other ports. I can’t think of anything else I have running that would use a port. Shouldn’t be anything.
When this happens does LightBurn connect and work correctly?
Did you attempt the order of operations I listed above?
Unlikely. These are for different device types entirely so isn’t likely to have any interplay.
I can think of a couple of possible causes but uncertain:
The USB port itself is failing. Try a different a USB port if available.
Your USB cable is damaged. Try a different cable
The USB port on the controller side is damaged. Could require a controller replacement. If the laser is working when you don’t receive the USB error then this seems less likely.
You have a bad driver or driver conflict on the WCH340. Try removing the driver entirely in the Driver tab removing all remnants of the driver. Then have Windows reinstall the driver or get the latest driver from WCH: wch-ic.com
When this happens does LightBurn connect and work correctly?
No, it appears the same error.
Did you attempt the order of operations I listed above?
Yes I did!
The USB port itself is failing. Try a different a USB port if available.
I did try a different port. Same thing.
Your USB cable is damaged. Try a different cable
Tried a different cable as well. Same thing.
The USB port on the controller side is damaged. Could require a controller replacement. If the laser is working when you don’t receive the USB error then this seems less likely.
Seems a stretch as everything else is working. (mouse, keyboard, monitor, headphones, etc…)
You have a bad driver or driver conflict on the WCH340. Try removing the driver entirely in the Driver tab removing all remnants of the driver. Then have Windows reinstall the driver or get the latest driver from WCH: wch-ic.com
I think I did this correctly. Uninstalled and followed the procedure you listed above. Same results. This seems the most likely to me. Everything was working last time I used lightburn a few days previously, and stopped working when I updated. I tried the driver you provided. Similar results, think the only difference was I didn’t get the error about driver failing to restart. Going to fiddle with the driver some, see if I can figure it out.
When I say controller I’m talking about the controller on the laser side. If the issue was there then this would not affect the other hardware you listed.
Do you have another computer that you could test the laser to rule out the issue being on the controller side?
That seems significant and a good start.
Do you potentially have a Windows snapshot from prior to the issues starting that you could revert to?
The update is almost certainly unrelated to the issue. LightBurn is not involved in the usb serial driver.
One thing to try is to enable “Enable DTR signal” in Edit->Device Settings. I don’t believe it should be requried for your laser but worth a shot.
OK, so I installed on my wife’s laptop, using the instructions found here. Only change to that, was I used the driver you provided above. Worked fine with existing cable.
Went back to the original computer. I uninstalled lightburn. Ran the driver uninstall for BOTH the CH40 drivers, one you mentioned above, and the original driver in that previous thread… Rebooted, then followed procedure above, except using the driver you recommended. Same issue. “Waiting for connection”. If I change the port in device manager, in lightburn, I get a message about “being in use”.
Seems like it is surely a driver issue. I tried uninstalling the drivers using their exe installers. Couldn’t figure out how to uninstall the FTDI driver that Lightburn installs. I also tried uninstalling the driver through device manager. No real changes.
How about seeing if there’s a Windows snapshot you can rollback to?
No snapshots.
How are you connected to the laser? Is there a hub in between or are you connected directly? Have you tried using a different USB port?
I’ve tried 2 different directly connected USB ports, a USB hub, etc…
It has to be something with the driver, whether its the FTDI or CH40 driver. Uninstalling Lightburn seems to come back with all settings. Maybe I should completely purge it from my system?
Got it working. Tried LaserGRBL, and it didn’t work (good call). Started researching how to reset windows com ports, ran across this thread. Not sure if all of it is required, but I did the following;
Unplugged the USB device
Used regedit to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\COM Name Arbiter and modifyComDB. Deleted everything in there that I could. Left me with a eight 0’s IIR.
Rebooted PC
Plugged in USB
Installed CH340 3.8 driver previously provided in thread.
Tested LaserGRBL. SUCCESS!
Tested Lightburn FAILURE!
Reinstalled Lightburn 14.0.1, making sure to reinstall the FTDI driver. SUCCESS!
Awesome result. Glad you persevered and was able to sort it out. And your contribution with the solution could certainly help out the next person. Although it’s a very peculiar scenario.
It’s possible that LaserGRBL left the serial port in a state that LightBurn wasn’t expecting.
The FTDI driver is almost certainly a red herring as the hardware doesn’t exist to affect anything on the system but at least you’re up and running.
