nRF Connect for VS Code - No devices found

[Ken58]

I have 2 devices, an nRF52840 Dongle and an nRF52840-DK, connected to a Windows 11 PC  running nRF Connect for VS Code using the nRF Connect SDK 2.4.0.  With the default configuration of Nrf-connect:Device Provider set to nrfutil, neither device is seen in the CONNECTED DEVICES display.  If I switch to the other Nrf-connect:Device Provider choice, nrfjprog, I can see the nRF52840-DK in the CONNECTED DEVICES display.   Why can't I see both devices?  Why did I need to switch to nrfjprog?  What should I be doing differently?  Will the Dongle not be visible on the CONNECTED DEVICES because it does not support J-Link?

Here is a pic of the device manager display.  COM4 is the nRF52840-DK, COM5 is the dongle:

[Menon]

Hello,

This is because the  dongle doesn't comes with an onboard debugger. You can build the sample for dongle in VScode and for flashing you need to use programmer App inside the nRF connect for desktop.

See the Dongle programming tutorial.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

[Burt]

I found that in order to use nrfutil in Windows I "often" need to add a directory to my PATH such as %USERPROFILE%\.nrfutil\lib\nrfutil-device so that .dll's are in my PATH. Sometimes things work without the PATH addition; they appear to work all the time if I adjust the PATH. I am very baffled why Nordic hasn't done something about this after the first customer complaint.

Burt