Windows 10 instability

RE: Windows 10 instability

Priyanka — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 11:38:49 GMT

Hi Jerry,

Glad to hear that you were able to isolate the issue. 🙂

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 11:27:14 GMT

I have done further testing after having disabled Avast and I am NOT having any problems, so I think this issue is definitely an Avast problem.

Regards,

Jerry

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 18:08:15 GMT

Hi Priyanka,

I haven’t done any of the things you suggest yet. However. I think I have proven it’s not a Nordic problem: I bought a LAUNCH-CC26X2R1 from TI, downloaded their Code Composer, built and flashed one of their samples. I experienced EXACTLY the same problem. So I’m thinking this has nothing to do with Nordic. I also doubt that it is the Segger drivers, although I have not ruled them out. I now suspect my anti virus software, Avast. I am going to disabe the antivirus, if I can figure out how, and run my tests again. I’ll post my results as soon as I am done.

Again:

Different board, Different IDE, Different sample => same results.

Regards,

Jerry

RE: Windows 10 instability

Priyanka — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:20:07 GMT

Hi Jerry,

Since it also happens on the Dongle, it could not be an issue with the SEGGER Drivers as it does not have an onboard Segger chip. The USB CDC ACM interface uses the native USB port on the nRF52840 and it will normally use the built-in usbser.sys driver in Windows. You can check if you see the same behavior with other USB CDC ACM devices (e.g. running a serial application through the interface MCU of the DK, or similar).You can also try out the USB CDC ACM example from nRF5 SDK, to see if there is a problem with the sample in NCS or with the nRF52840 device.

Best Regards,

Priyanka

RE: Windows 10 instability

Priyanka — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:23:06 GMT

Hi Jerry,

I have consulted this internally with the team and will get back to you as soon as I get a solid response.

-Priyanka

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 11:30:06 GMT

I have recovered my nrf52480 by reflashing the h-link. I now cannot get my USB CDC ACM application to run properly on my nRF52480-dk; It stll works correctly on my nRF52480-dongle. AND the windows 10 instability has returned. There is definitely something wrong with the USB CDC ACM interface that is crashing my system.

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 02:12:36 GMT

Well, I thought I knew what was going on, but now I can no longer get my test application to run on my nRF52840-dk; it runs fine on my nRF52840-dongle. In order to get the application that was causing my system to hang up off of the dk, I held the reset button down for about 10 seconds; maybe I need to download firmware for it in order to restore its operation? Any ideas?

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:05:15 GMT

well, I figured it out! It is the console traffic across the usb port. Even a moderate amount of console traffic causes "system interrupts" cpu overhead to spike. I was printing a short message to the console every 5 seconds or so. In any case I can avoid crashing my widows system by severely restricting my console traffic. There is definitely something wrong with the Segger drivers; there is no way a trickle of console messages should cause such a huge (sometimes 100%) cpu overhead spike.

Regards,

Jerry

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:56:36 GMT

Subsequent to the above, I did the following:

1) I reinstalled the Segger drivers,

2) Rebooted Windows 10

3) I plugged my bRF52840-dk into two usb ports, one for power, one for nRF.

4) I immediately noticed the system became sluggish; task manager showed "system interrupts" at 100% cpu usage.

5) This tells me that there is a fault with nRF52840-dk hardware or the application I am running is causing the device drivers a problem; I'm betting on the application. This may also help explain the difficulties I was having on Ubuntu

RE: Windows 10 instability

Jerry Easley — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 12:34:57 GMT

Hi Privanka,

Sorry about the delay in responding;

Regarding the previous ticket thing; sometimes I have difficulty finding a ticked I have opened; sometimes my searches work and sometimes not I have no idea why.

Regarding Windows 10 updates and changes: Microsoft pushes updates onto my computer all the time and sometimes they cause problems. In some very rare cases causing me to rebuild my OS. I don't think that is what is going on here, but I can't rule it out.

As I said earlier, I noticed this problem when I left VSCODE open and left it unattended for three or so hours. I no longer think VSCODE is the problem. I started closing VSCODE every time I was to be away. The problem still occurred but seemingly a litter slower to develop. I did the following experiment:

1) Brought up VSCODE and built two versions of a simple Hello World application that writes a short string to a usb console. every 5 or so seconds,

2) I flashed my nRF52480-dk and nRF52480-dongle with their respective images.

3) I started two putty sessions, one for each device.

4) After I was sure both devices were running the application and data was appearing on the two putty terminals, I closed VSCODE an all other applications on my PC.

5) Then I just let it sit for about 4 hours.

6) When I returned, the symptoms appeared and I had to power my PC off to reboot.

7) After a little work getting my system back and suspecting a bug in the segger drivers, I uninstalled them.

8) I let the system sit over the weekend and just returned to it about an hour ago; No symptoms appeared.

So you're up to date. In my experience, problems of this type are very hard to isolate and finding a solution is a problematic proposition. If there is anything you would like me to try, please let me know.

Fearing I might not find a solution to this problem I've been trying to get things up and running on Ubuntu on a Raspberry PI, another can of worms! But that's another story.

It was good to hear from you.

Regards,

Jerry

RE: Windows 10 instability

Priyanka — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:51:15 GMT

Hi Jerry,

This should be the previous ticket that you mentioned. I had asked for a few details there, but did not receive any response from your end. It would be great if you could provide those details so that we can look further into the issue.

Also, please close one of the tickets as it is a duplicate and we can continue the conversation in the other.

Best Regards,

Priyanka