Is this nrf52840DK really bricked?

RE: Is this nrf52840DK really bricked?

Michael Lamming — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 18:50:09 GMT

After a struggle, yes I did manage to get things working under W10. Under W11... not so much.

History: I needed to demonstrate the Arduino IDE. As you know, the Arduino IDE is not officially supported by Nordic. But there is a well-described procedure for using the nRF52 family with Arduino that I referenced in my previous post. It involves a simple USB driver/library replacement process using a tool called Zadig. This has worked well for me under Windows 10. Moreover, it was fairly easy to roll it back for 'normal' development under SES or similar using the W10 Device Manager.

Unfortunately, under W11 I just could not figure out how to roll back the driver to the standard one, and get nRFConnect, or nrfjprog to find the nRF device. In the end I found the line-of-least-resistance was to remove a bunch of Windows Driver Packages installed by Segger and Nordic installs, and all programs that mentioned Segger, and Nordic . Then I reinstalled from scratch with a few reboots of course.

For the record, my "Zadig undo fix" for W11was as follows:

pnputil -d <every driver that mentioned Arduino, Segger, Nordic, or libusb>
Use Windows Apps & Features manager to remove all driver packages that mention SEGGER
re-install jlink software
nrfjprog --recover //Yay, it appears to work
re-install nrfconnect desktop app to see if it works - it finds a device called nRF52 DK

I don't know how many of the above steps are necessary, but this recipe worked for me. Guru's will hopefully be able to explain a more streamlined process, but I'm a mere mortal.

Cheers,

Mik

RE: Is this nrf52840DK really bricked?

Jørgen Holmefjord — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 17:09:06 GMT

Did you manage to get the DK working with another PC that had not had Zadig installed?

RE: Is this nrf52840DK really bricked?

Michael Lamming — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 22:36:55 GMT

It's taken a few days to systematically work through all the options. I followed the instructions above kindly provided by Jørgen, but alas no joy. My issue is consistent with the problem reported as an interaction between Zadig and Windows 11. c.f. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/zadig-and-windows-11.1440/

It appears that using Zadig to set drivers to use Arduino with nRF52 under Win11 is possible but undoing that setup by rolling back the driver as suggested for W10 no longer effective. It requires manually removing, and reinstating drivers. c.f. https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-nRF5

If someone knows this to be incorrect, or has good magic, please let me know.

RE: Is this nrf52840DK really bricked?

Jørgen Holmefjord — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 15:37:02 GMT

Hi,

[quote user=""]Can anyone explain why nRFConnect (v3.10.0) for Desktop, using Programmer (v2.3.3) under Win11 recognises my nRF52832DK as a JLink device, but then says it can't talk to it because it isays it s NOT a JLink or Nordic device?[/quote]

Can you try to program/erase the board using nrfjprog, to see if the issue is with the board/Windows version, or if it is with nRF Connect/Programmer application?

[quote user=""]I have button+power-cycled + dragged and dropped "3566.J-Link OB-SAM3U128-V2-NordicSemi 160315" onto it when it shows up as a drive D:.[/quote]

From one of your images, it looks like the board shows up as a BOOTLOADER drive. You need to drag and drop the firmware file to this device again if you have entered bootloader mode on the DK by holding IFBOOT/RESET pin while powering the DK, as it will erase the current firmware. When the board enumerates as JLINK, it should be working.

[quote user=""]Zadig is in the equation too some time ago I recall. Could that be the prob. somehow?[/quote]

That is possible. Can you test the DK(s) on a PC that did not have Zadig installed?

[quote user=""]I assume this has something to do with the fact that when I plug it in, the device manager reports like in this image below.[/quote]

It should show up in the Device Manager as "JLink CDC UART Port".

Best regards,
Jørgen