ProTools LE 10.3.4: Unable to locate hardware

[elcabong]

I have ProTools LE 10.3.4 which came with my Mbox mini USB audio interface. I'm running on Win 7 64-bit. I had been using it just fine for a few months or so. Today I plugged in the interface and started PT and got the dreaded: "Unable to locate HW" PT error afterwhich PT closes.

The first thing I did was update the driver to 1.1.8 But the odd thing is that I notice when I plug in the USB port to my PC, a box pops up saying that it's searching Windows update for the latest driver. It's almost as though it didn't see my latest driver install. It seems to get a driver from Microsoft dated

11/19/2010, Version 6.1.7601.17514

I tried disconnecting the box, then uninstalling the driver, then installing the new driver with the box disconnected. Everything seems to install just fine. Once I connect the box, it again seems to go out to Microsoft and get the driver and then says that the one above installed and ready for use.

If I try to do a "driver update" in control panel, it says that the one I have is the latest. Of course, I can't manually load the latest driver because it's an exe file and I have no idea where it installs the driver files.

There's an MBox icon in Control Panel which allows me to start up the MBox application. It seems to run fine and shows the latest SW version. But PT still won't start with this app running.

I also see there's a PT 10.3.5 update, but I have no idea if this applies to PT LE. I couldn't find any info on this on the site. I don't know if this has anything to do with my problem or not.

Has anyone else had this problem? Thanks for any suggestions.

[elcabong]

Well, I've figured out that it's not the PT app, the MBox is not working at all. I've tried holding down the N key and deleting the prefs, but I think those won't work for me since the MBox is not working. I'm sure of this since now even the MBox app says hw not connected.

However, the box is recognized by Windows when I plug it in and it says the driver was loaded successfully. So I need to determine if it's a hw problem, or if Windows is loading a generic driver instead of the Avid one.

Can anyone verify what driver they see in control panel for a working MBox mini (or any MBox)? Is it the one I listed in my 1st message?

Does anyone know where that stupid driver installer exe puts the frickin driver file so that I can try to manually load it? Or even what the name of the driver file is so that I can search for it?

I tried the Sandra app to get a report for my PC but I get some error, something about it can't find a script file. I don't have time to debug that too!

I have a pretty basic machine:

3.5Ghz quad core
16Gig of RAM
2 2TB HDs
Nvidia 560 graphics, 1G video RAM
Win7 64

I'm plugged directly into the PCs USB2 port, not USB3 and no HUBs or anything.

Anything else pertinent to this problem? I don't think these specs are relevant to this problem.

[elcabong]

Update: I got it working.

First, I still don't know what changed in my system to start the problem. Maybe it was the Prefs issue, I really dunno.

In trying to fix the problem, I downloaded the MBox driver. I got this from searching/navigating on the Avid site. But this is not the correct driver, I needed the MBox Mini driver. I thought they were one and the same, but they are not. For example with Nvidia graphics, you DL one driver and it figures out which of the myriad of possible cards you could have and loads accordingly.

Going through the FAQ, I was directed to the correct Mbox Mini driver and then I noticed it was different.

After loading the (incorrect) MBox driver, Windows saw it was the wrong one and went and fetched a generic one from Microsoft. Windows was fat dumb and happy with this driver and would recognize the box with it, but the box wouldn't actually do anything with this driver other than being recognized. This made it appear as though my HW went bad. I'm glad that at least I didn't try to return the box.

Well, I hope my saga might help someone out there.

[albee1952]

Nice detective work. Some things to check:
Always Run as Admin(let me know if you don't know how to make this automatic)
Turn OFF Windows automatic update
Save a drive image now(RIGHT NOW) while things are working.
Always boot with the Mbox connected(and always in the same USB port)