Win 10 FTDIgate solved!

My recent upgrade to Windows 10 has brought back to me an old issue: FTDI drivers.

Yes, I’ve bought cheap Chinese Arduino clones, mostly small boards to use in my projects as the official ones are quite expensive.

I never had problems on my previous Windows 7 install: even if I knew I was probably using one or more of those infamous FTDI counterfeited usb-to-ttl chips, I was lucky enough to dodge the FTDIgate.

When today, while setting up again my Eclipse + Arduino Eclipse Plugin, I stumbled into a weird message on the serial console my first thought was they did it again!

So, if your cheap Arduino clone has suddenly stopped responding and your OS is Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 you are probably stumbling on my exact same issue and you might want to carefully read this post to solve your troubles.

1. Assess

First of all you want to verify you are affected by the new FTDIgate, so connect via a serial terminal of your choice to your problematic Arduino: if you see a repeated message stating NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND! then welcome aboard!

2. The tools

We will download all the tools we need upfront because this process implies we will have to disconnect from the Internet at a certain point to prevent Windows 10 to kick our butts with its automatic updates.

What you need is:

• an older version of the FTDI drivers, latest working ones are 2.10.00, which you can get from FTDI in the No Longer Supported section (get the zip version)
• a tool called CDMUninstaller which completely removes the existing drivers and it’s distributed by FTDI itself

3. Clean up

First we need to remove the drivers causing us all these troubles. If you believe you can do that via the Windows Device manager then youa re wrong: these drivers come in two separate parts, only one of which can be managed via the default driver management tool. You need the CDMUninstaller tool to ensure the drivers are completely removed:

I’m not 100% it is needed, but I suggest you restart your system now, just to be sure there are no leftovers.

4. Prepare

It’s now time to load the new drivers, but be sure to do it with your Arduino board unconnected and while being offline.

Start decompressing the drivers package, then install the drivers right clicking on the two .inf files and selecting Install from the context menu.

Now it’s a good time to verify you have solved your problem, so open a serial terminal and check you can now communicate again with your Arduino.

The drivers we have just installed are going to be replaced at first opportunity by Windows with the trouble-making ones. In order to prevent Windows to find a more recent drivers version online, which will occur as soon as you’ll go back online, you have to open the two .inf files in any text editor, change the DriverVer line with a date very far in the future (I sat mine to 01/27/2034) and save.

If you now right click on the two .inf files and select Install from the context menu you’ll receive an error message informing you the files do not match their signature: don’t worry, we are going to solve this little issue.

We need to restart our OS, but allowing for unsigned drivers install: this can be achieved only with a system restart so open the Settings app and navigate to Update & security > Recovery.

Since the next step will actually restart your computer you have to read the next paragraph carefully before selecting the Restart Now button in the Advanced startup section.

5. Advanced Restart

Once in the Advanced restart section you’ll have to browse the advanced settings to Disable drivers signature verification, something a little tricky to achieve, but look at the following pictures and prepare yourself:

Select option Troubleshoot	Head into Advanced Options
Pick the Startup Settings	And finally Restart
Activate the Disable driver signature enforcement setting

During the restart process you will be asked to select an option to activate during the next boot: we need to disable drivers signature verification, which was option number 7 for me.

6. Permanent Install

After reboot you will be able to right click on the two .inf files and select Install from the context menu: you will still receive a warning, but this time you will be able to get around the issue and proceed ignoring the verification error.

You can now go back online on the Internet, this time Windows shouldn’t be able to replace your working drivers!

7. Verify

It’s now time to restart your computer and verify everything still works. After a reboot open the Device Manager, select the problematic Arduino COM port and check the drivers version: if it’s anything above the version you selected…. well, something went wrong.

If I were you would try restarting from step 1, but this time try to read more carefully the instructions!