I’m a happy Lightburn user for many years. Never had any issues with my custom 40W Smoothieware/Cohesion3D Mini system.
Last week I had to upgrade my Windows DELL laptop to Windows 11. From this on, jobs stopped in the middle, while LightBurn still thinks it is streaming the data. Some small jobs finished sometimes, but mostly it stopped sending data at various points.
As the change has been migrating from Win10 to Win11, I blame Windows USB drivers for the problem. I even upgraded my license of LightBurn and tried the latest v2.0.4. But this did not help: jobs stopped somewhere in the middle. I tried to run LightBurn as administrator, but that did not help. Closed all applications, rebooted the machine multiple time, did not help.
So finally I ended up digging out a really old Win7 machine, loaded it with the last 32bit version, manually installed the Smoothie drivers, and everything is running as it should. No stopped jobs any more.
So for me I have a working solution with a Win7 machine. But for others having similar issues, that might be a warning message: despite LightBurn supports Win11, there might be USB driver issues.
Maybe. LightBurn with Smoothie worked flawlessly for me with Win7, Win8 and Win10. Only with Win11 the issue appeared. I have not tweaked the USB driver on my machine in anyway around the power saving modes. So if this would have been the case, it would have occurred in Win10 as well.
I was thinking that the culprit could be the Smoothie firmware: but this one still seems responding. So it is maybe something missing in the LightBurn USB traffic handling dealing with a change on the Windows side. As I have not seen anything like this with all my other USB CDC/VCOM connections under Win11.
The forum has seen this problem more than a few times. MikeyH gave you the answer.
You would be very polite if you would at least try his solution with good faith. Your old windows USB settings did not get transferred to the new version, IMHO.
Thank you for your reply and suggestion. With all the respect: I already did that and tried that. I tried isolating the issue, many days. From tweaking settings to changing cables and power supplies. It did not make any difference: Jobs are constantly failing with Win11.
I did not had to tweak USB settings under Win7, Win8 or Win10. It always worked. The factor which made it fail is Windows11.
I did read the other posts about similar issues with stopping mid-transfer of data on Windows. I’m running with power adapter attached, and the machine does not go into any power saving mode. And I already tried out disabling USB power-saving settings. Things are different for Win11, and the article How to Change USB Power Settings in Windows 11: A Step-by-Step Guide helped. I followed all the steps and disabled power savings for all USB root hubs.
But this all did not help: jobs still stopped randomly, making using Win11 with LightBurn unusable for me on Win11.
So I’ll keep that old Win7 machine running in the shop: that one works without any problems. Maybe not an ideal solution, but one which always works.
On a side note: I was very close to change to Linux instead of upgrading to Windows 11. The main reason to continue use Windows was that LightBurn discontinued Linux support. I 100% understand that decision, but LightBurn was the key decision factor to stay with Windows. Now as LightBurn does not work for me with Windows11, I might revert my decision: get rid of Windows, use Linux on my main machine, and keep the old Windows7 machine running in the shop (of course disconnected from the network & internet).