Presonus FP 10 on Windows 10

[Biff Mixalot]

I upgraded to Windows 10 awhile back and followed instructions for installing the FP 10 driver using compatibility mode as described in another thread. Windows 10 did an automatic upgrade a few weeks ago and now I'm saddled with the following PITA scenario.

- Power up the computer, Windows starts. Light stays red on the FP 10
- Monkey around in device manager - FP 10 shows as up and running. It isn't either of those things. No logged errors that I can find. Tried disabling and re-enabling. Nada.
- Power back down and restart. FP 10 blue light comes on and unit functions.

Leaving everything on all of the time isn't an option. When I log off and go into sleep mode and come back and turn on the FP 10 and power the pc back up....red light. In every situation I have to bring up windows with the FP 10 on, power all the way back down again with the FP 10 on and restart the computer. I tried removing and re-installing the driver. Same results. Maddening.

Thoughts?

 

[gecko zzed]

I posted this a while ago:

Because my C drive was being cranky, I took the opportunity to clone it to two SSDs. One is XP which I had been running on the old hard drive, but the other I loaded up with Win7 then did the free upgrade to Win10.

By swapping SSDs I can choose to run in XP or W10.

My worry about Windows 10 was that the Firepod is a discontinued product and drivers aren't available for W10.

However, I did find this somewhere on the web, so I thought I would give it a try:

Run the file (should be called "PreSonus_FirePod_FP10_Installation.exe")
It will ask where you want to extract to, specify a folder you can get to easily and click "Install"
It will now tell you "This Setup cannot run on the current operating system." No problem!
Open the folder that you extracted the setup to.
Right click on "setup.exe" and open "Properties".
Go to the "Compatibility" tab.
Check the box labeled "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and the dropdown to "Windows 7"
Click "Apply" and "Ok"
Run setup.exe

The file (Presonus Firepod FP10 Installation.exe) installs Firepod drivers v 5.13.0.0. It is available here:

PreSonus | FP10 - Downloads

Note that the work around described is for Windows 7. But I tried it anyway . . . and it worked!

So now the Firepod is running happily under Windows 10.

I installed Reaper in W10. It found the Firepod ok, and is also running happily.

However, I am having some difficulties in installing some plug-ins which are not playing nicely.

Because of the plug-in problem, I've gone back to XP, and most likely I will stay there until it becomes impossible.

That means I haven't gone through the experience of a W10 update.

But a couple of thoughts for you to consider.

1 Don't use sleep mode. Either power right down or stay on. I have a vague recollection of reading about problems with machines going into sleep mode.

2 When powering up, try turning on the FP10 before the computer.

I don't think the FP10 firmware is the best designed in the world, and it does have some idiosyncracies. For example, on my laptop, it will sometimes synch up happily when both are started. At other times it won't, but will if I take out the firewire cable and re-insert it. And sometimes this doesn't workj, but what does is turning the firepod off and on. And sometimes this doesn't work either, but rebooting the laptop does. Both the desktops, though, happily synch up on boot up.

 

[Biff Mixalot]

Goofy solution...

Status: pc in sleep mode, FP 10 off
Start pc, wait for Windows 10 to boot up
Turn on FP 10, driver does its thing and the magical blue light comes on

And the angels sang.

 

[gecko zzed]

Goofy solution...

Status: pc in sleep mode, FP 10 off
Start pc, wait for Windows 10 to boot up
Turn on FP 10, driver does its thing and the magical blue light comes on

And the angels sang.

Well done!
It's matter of latching on to the sequence that works.