• Registered: 2018-09-01
  • Posts: 3

Topic: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

I'm completely stumped. I had my UFX+ up and working like a dream with Thunderbolt in Windows 10 -- all smooth, no mysteries, working fine with system devices and with Cubase Pro 9.5.

But then I started turning off a couple of BIOS items to improve some performance spikes I was getting in both Cubase and Ivory. Everything was working until I turned off hyperthreading, and upon restart the system could no longer find the RME driver. Not available in Cubase or system devices. So I turn hyperthreading back on: no change. I could still see the TotalMix and DSP status icons in the system tray, but suddenly nothing was happening when I clicked them.

And now the really annoying stuff: I try to reinstall the driver update to see if that repairs things: no luck. OK, time for drastic measures: I uninstall the RME Thunderbolt driver through the Windows 10 uninstall process, and then reinstall the base drivers using the RME base driver CD. NOTHING. Nothing happens. No driver, no TotalMix or DSP setting icons or function. System still thinks there are no RME drivers at all.

I even tried a system restore at that point, to no avail. I honestly have no clue what to do at this point. Help?

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,443

Re: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

When all the trouble started did you do something simple as turning the UFX+ off and on again? Removing and replugging the TB cable? Did you change any BIOS options for Thunderbolt?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2018-09-01
  • Posts: 3

Re: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

Did toggle the UFX+ power. Did replace cable. Problem is pretty clearly with the driver, not hardware.

I didn't change any BIOS options for Thunderbolt -- in same settings that had worked smoothly for weeks.

Trying to avoid having to do a clean install of Windows, but that may well be the next step.

4 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2018-09-02 10:04:37)

  • ramses
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  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 12,886

Re: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

Why don't you perform backups using a reliable disc imaging software?

Then you would be back in 10 minutes.

I take additionally disk images from
- vanilla Windows installation
- after driver installation
- after windows upgrade
- after application installation
- after fine tuning Windows

The full installation is my golden image which I can restore shall it turn out after some days or weeks that some system, driver or application upgrades were bad.

If the system is reliable for a weeks then sometimes I update the "golden image" where I recommend to always keep the 1st golden image after a clean installation as anchor to quickly come back to there if required.

This gives zillions of option to fallback to whatever you might require in any situation.

In combination to this I mirror user profiles and user data in native format automated with windows taskmanager to internal and external disk.

On top of that Macrium Reflect supports so called rapid delta restore mechanism which means that only changed blocks on disk will be rewritten.

This has two advantages: reduction of wear on SSDs and much reduced recover time.

Although I have 600 GB deployed on my primary SSD it's possible to fallback to the day or week before in less than 15 Minutes.

Shall you need to reinstall then I strongly recommend that you organize things better as a complete reinstall of OS, applications, VST/VSTI and optimizing Windows for recording and privacy takes a lot of time. Especially as also the last version of OS drivers and tools in some cases is not the best, I.e.nVidia Driver to put an example.
So always save store offline installers of good working versions of drivers and software on disk additionally and backup them as well.

That said always 2 folders tested and untested.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2018-09-01
  • Posts: 3

Re: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

Thanks for the recommendation, Ramses. Given that system restore -- and I'd studiously made backup points at each major install -- failed me, I think I definitely will be looking into a more robust system backup program like Macrium.

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
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  • Registered: 2012-10-14
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Re: UFX+ Thunderbolt driver crash/corruption in Windows 10

For some use cases backup points are not bad like before driver or application installation as we all know that uninstaller usually work weak leaving files and registry entries on disk.

But nobody really knows how this is working and sometimes it even fails.

Therefore I prefer disk imaging programs with backup functionality included.

This works IMHO best if you separate user data from the installation disk.

On top I really recommend to safe user and user profile data additionally in native format because the best program can sometimes fail and you don't want to stay there as worst case with an unreadable backup file.

I have plenty of data so I needed to split installation disk and user data so that backup and restore operations do not take too long for Macrium Reflect.

If you have not so many data you can even backup with user data on installation disk, which is the case for most laptops anyway.

Backup to external disk work good with USB 3.1 when both, controller and drive enclosure for the disk, support UASP which is USB attached SCSI protocol. I can recommend controller and case from Startech.

A good combination for me was to put an example:

1TB SSD
3 GB 7200 for User data
512 GB SSD for Win10 Evaluation.
256 GB SSD for recording and vido editing
10 TB disk as internal backup disk for Macrium Diskimages/Backup of 1TB system disk and for daily and weekly Freefilesync Mirror in native format.
An older 4TB disk 5400U/min serves for mirror of profile and user data in native format plus the latest + greatest golden image.

With Macrium I use the grandfather, father, son backup mechanism which is a combination of full,  differential and incremental backup.

The Diskimage and Golden Images I create as I need and store them into a separate folder so that they do not become expired or deleted by accident.

This saves me cost, noise  and complexity of a NAS device.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13