DK boards (nrf52832DK and nrf52840DK) fail to load JLINK driver

Question

I tried to install the latest nRF Connect (3.1.0) on my Windows 7 dev machine and it did something to wipe out my USB setup (froze up during install of JLINK). So I had to use the latest System Restore Point to get my USB keyboard, mouse, etc to work. 
 But now my Nordic DK boards won't load. When I plug them in the USB, I see a "Port" show up, but the "JLINK" part of the driver doesn't show up in the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" section any more. 
 On this same computer, I can use my standalone J-Link debugger (the expensive kind), and I can even use it to debug my DK boards (in a limited fashion, since I was using the built-in debugger for comms too, and that's all messed up now). 
 These same DK boards are visible and work on a different Widows 10 laptop and Macbook (i.e. I can 'nrfjprog -f NRF52 --reset', --halt, --run and all those work). So the DK boards seem ok. I tried forcing a reload of the DK jlink firmware and that doesn't make it work on the win7 box. 
 Absent other good ideas to try (which are welcome), is there a way to force the complete removal of JLINK drivers from the USB subsystem of this windows 7 machine and reinstall from scratch ? I've tried uninstalling JLINK itself from the programs and features" control panel (even going so far as choosing a few different versions of jlink to try) and it still doesn't work. 
 
 Edit: on the same Win7 machine, in a Mint Linux VM, the nrfjprog + jlink tools work like they are supposed to. It's only trying to use them on the Win7 host that doesn't seem to work

Keith Brafford · Accepted Answer

When I used the J-Link configurator on a working machine I verified that my boards have the latest firmware (jan 7 2019). 
 I was finally able to get it to work, but I am not sure which of these steps was the solution: 
 
 I did another system restore to a previous date about a week earlier than the one I did before 
 Plugged in one of the nRF52 boards. Failed driver. 
 Copied the inf file into the Windows\inf folder (a potential solution from a thread on segger: 
 https://forum.segger.com/index.php/Thread/3918-SOLVED-J-Link-driver-issue/ 
 
 Re-enumerated. Failure. 
 Right-clicked on the failed load in the device manager and tried to update the driver . I pointed it to the JLink 6.34b\USBDriver folder and it seemed to recognize that it is a valid driver (which is new&mdash;before this system restore, pointing it at 6.44e didn&rsquo;t work, but this earlier system restore left me with more JLink drivers to choose from, so I picked the next older one that I had before 6.44: 6.34b). But updating it didn&rsquo;t cause it to load correctly 
 Right-clicked on the failed load in the device manager and Uninstalled the driver (while keeping the device plugged in and turned on). I also told Windows to &ldquo;remove the files&rdquo; after it uninstalled. It uninstalled, then immediately self-installed the 6.34 version of the driver 
 It worked for a few minutes&hellip;I was able to enumerate and see all the components of the driver for all of the boards, and I was able to use Nordic&rsquo;s command line tools to connect through the segger-ob processor to halt, run, and reset the board 
 Then the driver hung the machine on an enumeration, again&hellip;kinda like what seemed to happen the first time. 
 I waited a long time, and had to power off the machine 
 Had to wait over night to let the RAID boot drive do its sanity check 
 This morning, so far, the driver still loads. I have two nRF52840 boards and one nRF52832 board attached at the same time, and the command line tools seem to be working. 
 
 I'll let you know if this situation seems stable, or if the problem returns.

DK boards (nrf52832DK and nrf52840DK) fail to load JLINK driver

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