BSOD after installing Sparki

I just got my Sparki and I’m really looking forward to working with it. However, after installing the software and drivers, I got a BSOD when I connected Sparki to my computer via USB. After rebooting, I was able to connect Sparki, but I could not get any of the example programs to upload. It seems like it’s not able to communicate with Sparki, even though I made sure I selected the correct board and port (COM3). Since then, I my computer has blue screened again.

Each time I reboot, I get a DAX Error that says: “Trying to create a TUCServer object on a secondary instance”. I would greatly appreciate any help you can give me with this. Thanks!

That’s odd. What operating system?

Does manually uploading work?
arcbotics.com/lessons/manual-upload/

The problem seems to be worse today. I can’t even get tot hte point of trying the manaul upload. As soon as I plug in the Sparki, I get a blue screen each time. I even tried another Sparki and get the same result. I am using Windows 7 Enterprise.

Here is what I have tried so far: I realized after my problems yesterday that I had some software and drivers for other robots installed and I thought if I uninstall everything and only re-install the Sparkiduino software, this might help. So, I did this and reinstalled Sparkiduino. When I connected the Sparki via USB, I clicked on the device driver installation bubble to watch what happens. I see it is installing the Sparki Bootloader (COM 6). It starts to install the drive then a red x pops up and says the device is unplugged (but it’s not). Below that, it says it is installing Arduino Leonardo and when it begins installing the driver, I get a blue screen. After the computer rebooted, I plugged in the Sparki and get a blue screen again. I tried a second Sparki and this time it says COM8 by the bootloader, but I get the same result.

I am getting very frustrated by this. Sparki looks like such a great product, but it’s frustrating that I can’t use it right now because of these issues. Please help!! Thanks

Do you have any chances of installing this on a different machine? It would be good to know if this is isolated to one machine or not.

Also try different USB ports, or using a USB 2.0 hub. It might be an issue with USB 3.0:
imaginaryindustries.com/blog/?p=118

I will try it on a different computer this weekend and let you know if I get different results. Thanks for the help

Salut,

you are experiencing a (quite well known) problem with the Leonardo and Windows. When you plug in the sparki, windows tries to load the Arduino Leonardo due to some previous connection to a Leonardo. This leads to a bad driver load and the subsequent BSOD. There is a way out of this dilemma: Remove all obsolete and unused driver references to get to a clean start. This is a length procedure and I have documented this on my web page: mathias-wilhelm.de/arduino/a … s/#english.
I hope, this solves your issue. I had exactly the same situation with a seeedstudio seeeduino lite. Due to this behavior I do not like Leonardos at all. The few dollars saved on the USB adapter are not worth the hassle with the windows driver and the loss of 2kB memory due to the larger bootloader. I suggest to add a ft232r to the next sparky design.

Ciao, Mathias

I tried the installation on a different computer and confirmed it is working. So, this definitely is isolated to the Leonardo issue described by Mathias. Mathias, I tried the procedure from your blog on my work computer, but about halfway through I realized I did not check the box to remove the files associated with the unused ports. Now I need to figure out a way to manually delete those files, if possible. Do you know how to do this or do you know the names of the files I should delete? Thanks again for all of your help, I finally feel like I am getting somewhere with this issue.

Chad

Salut,

if you plug in the Leonardo/Sparki and you get the BSOD, this will be due to the driver software (it is a link file but you cannot remove it by hand) is reused. After the reboot, the driver should not show up in the list and you can delete it this time including the software. In most cases, the driver removal removes everything even if the “remove files” is not selected. It is more a precaution.
Ciao, Mathias

Hi Mathias,

I have tried your suggestion again several times, but I always get the same results. I try to uninstall all of the ports referencing Sparki or Arduino. I then uninstall and reinstall the SparkiDuino software and drivers. When this has completed, I connect the Sparki and check the status of the driver installation. The Sparki Bootloader appears to install fine, but then it begins to install an Arduino Leonardo driver. During this installation, the system blue screens. It works on my home computer, so that is at least an alternative for now, but I would really like to figure out a way to get this working on my work computer. Thanks again for all of your help, I look forward to any additional suggestions you may have.

Chad

Salut,

looks like quite a puzzle…
As you mention that it installs the Leonardo Driver, this must be sourced from somewhere. Do you have a standard Arduino IDE installed? Or is it sourcing this from the SparkiIDE?
I suggest to:

  • deinstall SparkiIDE and Arudino IDE.
  • remove all drivers of unused devices in the device manager
  • clean your system using ccleaner from piriform.com including the registry errors
    ---- reboot
  • install Sparki IDE and connect the Sparki. With this action we have only the source from Sparki to get the driver from. It should not BSOD.
    Did you ever edit the *.inf files of the drivers?

If all fails, you can contact me via the contact information on my web page and we can have a TeamViewer Session where I take a look at your system.

Ciao, Mathias

I did have a standard Arduino IDE installed, but I have already uninstalled it thinking it may be causing a problem. I didn’t think to run ccleaner after uninstalling everything, I will try that tomorrow. I have not edited the *.inf files for the drivers. I looked earlier today and noticed a few instances of Leonardo in the registry, so perhaps ccleaner will clear those out and I can get back to a clean install. Thanks again for the suggestions, I will give you an update tomorrow after I have tried these steps.

Chad

Salut Chad,
Can you also check if the BSOD appears on every USB socket of the PC? I noticed once that the faulty driver got only loaded when I inserted the Leonardo in a certain port but not if I selected a differnet socket. That would narrow down the potential problem
We’ll get this resolved!
Ciao, Mathias

Hello Mathias,

I think I finally got it working. I have spent way too much time on this, but it seems I have made some progress and I can now connect to the Sparki and upload a sketch.

I tried all of your suggestions but still got the bsod. So, with the Sparki connected, I went into Device Manager and selected the Uninstall option on the Arduino Leonardo device that was appearing. I then ran the driver installer for Sparki, but this caused another blue screen. When the system rebooted, I went back into device manager and could see my “Arduino Leonardo” device in the list, but the driver is not installed. So, I selected the option to update the driver and chose to browse my computer for installed devices. Under Ports, I selected the Sparki Programed driver and installed that. Once installed, I can now see my Sparki under COM9. I hope it will continue to work and remain stable, but so far this appears to have corrected the issue. Thanks again for all of your help.

Chad