Saber Forum

I started a thread about some of my problems with my 1st saber, then saw this section which might be more appropriate for it...

Well the title says it all, can't get the obsidian soundboard to work on Windows 8.1 and Win7, both OS can't start the device...If I look under the device manager the USB input device associated with the saber as the yellow triangle on it with the ! symbol, and when you read the description of the problem, it's device won't start. Tried on an old win xp pc at work and it works fine.

Searched the forum and saw that some people had the same problem and uninstalled all the device under Universal serial bus Controller in the device manager and restarted the pc and it worked, it's not working for me.

And before you ask all the basic questions
1- Yes I am connecting in the right usb port on the saber and on the PC (2.0)
2- Yes the launcher works fine, (emerald driver works fine) and I am running it as an administrator
3- Yes I am doing it in the correct order, saber ON, then I plug it in the usb port.
4- Yes I tried a different USB cord
5- Yes I tried a different USB port on the PC
6- Yes the batteries are fully charge.

It's really driving me nuts now...been tinkering with it for 2 days. With no solutions.

That's weird. I have Windows 8 and I can get it to work. It doesn't always connect on the first try (it will say "device not found"), so then I just unplug the usb cable, plug it back in and try again, and it eventually works. And it always works for the Emerald.

You mentioned that you are running it as the administrator, but when you downloaded the launcher were you running the computer as the administrator? That's another important step.

yeah only have one account on the pc and it is setup with admin rights...but like I said it has nothing to do with the launcher, it's the generic usb driver that the board uses that are not working, I just reached the last step...just formatted my drive and reinstalled win 8.1 from scratch, hope it works...

I wish I could be more help. I usually just use my Mac for most things, so I don't entirely get all the tricks with pc's (it took me forever to find all of the VERY well-hidden menus on Windows 8... one was just to set the touchpad settings, ugh)...

...BUT I never set up more than one account on my pc, and I still have to log out of my "named" account and then log in as the administrator. So even though I only ever set up one account, there is still a separate way to be logged in as the administrator. Why? I have no idea.

Maybe someone out there is an expert on Windows 8. I am certainly not that person.

Well formatting my whole pc and starting from scratch didn't change anything...

Egads.. I hope you didn't really re-format your PC..

Here is the dance I have to go thru to get my Laptop (ASUS G75VW w Windows 7) to find the saber successfully:

Plug USB into Computer
Start Obsidian Launcher
Turn On Saber
Plug USB into Saber (computer says 'beep-bonk')
Open Control Panel > Devices and Printers > Lightsaber (w yellow triangle ! ) > right click > troubleshoot > apply this fix > (WAIT)
saber should turn off when fix is applied and the Obsidian Launcher connects.

It's a pain, but it works (for me at least) though the wait time can be about 2 mins sometimes..  ???

Magik does your device manager really sees it as "lightsaber" ?
Me it sees it as "USB Input device" and stays like that with the yellow triangle.

And yeah I did a complete format and it still doesn't work...I emailed Emory twice, first time he asked me all the basic questions to which I answered and now I just  sent him a screenshot with the rest of the steps I took..I am starting to believe that this is a defective board now, can't see any other solutions...

I will try your dance when I get home tonight...

Yeah, mine actually shows up as "Lightsaber" in the Devices and Printers section of the control panel. It has a pc/server type icon and then the little yellow warning triangle with the "!" in it..

One minor edit to my dance:
Open Control Panel > Devices and Printers > Lightsaber (w yellow triangle ! ) > right click > troubleshoot > ?? > apply this fix > (WAIT)

The "??" part said something like "try to fix automatically" or "search for fix" ..I forgot to note what it actually said there..

Ok well it seems that my board might have a problem then....since Windows doesn't even recognize it.

Tried it doesn't work, problem seems to be deeper than the drivers, Windows can't fix it, well waiting on Emory now...

By the way the emerald driver gets detected as a lightsaber without any problems... if both are running the same platform then there must be a problem with the soundboard itself.....

Well did some more testing with different pc's, it works on 1 win xp machine...doesn't work on 2 win7 machines and 2 Windows 8.1 machine...but the emerald driver board always work....

Strange.. makes me think it has something to do with USB drivers and/or actual USB hardware port types..

I wonder if putting an old usb hub in between the saber/cable and PC would make any difference..?

Point for this one.
Had that 'device not found'-issue since owning a new notebook with Windows 8.1. At first I didn't want to believe it, but then I just tried what you suggested.
IT REALLY WORKS!!!
Launcher connected immediately after plugging USB into saber.

It was just a random idea.. glad it worked!

I'm glad that works for me and my Emerald manticore it too didn't work immediately until oddly enough I tried using a different usb cable and since then haven't had any issues with it on both my 8.1 machines

I have a Windows 8 and my saber seems to connect just fine!  It doesn't matter if I turn the saber on first or not..  they only issue I'm having is that after I set a sound font configuration and go to write/save it to my device it says there was a device failure connections but yet it says it's connected!!  So I'm stuck with a saber without sound.. just the LED is on..  I think Windows 8 or my laptop is not working properly with the saber or obsidian launcher.. I'm gona try a different PC and Windows 7

Something I learned form installing my launcher was that installing while in an account that has administrator rights and installing as administrator are NOT the same thing. I originally thought it was and that since I am the only account and therefore administrator it was automatic that everything was installed as administrator. However, if you right click on an installer package there is a choice that specifically says "install as administrator". Once I removed everything and did it this way it started working much better. It sometimes still misses and I have to connect more than once but before it was one connect per install instead of one in two or three. Yes I did uninstall then reinstall for the first 5 times I connected. I am running windows 8.1and connecting through a very generic hub,

I'm having trouble getting it to start once I have the saber pluged in but I was doing it off line does the computer need to be on line to run the launcher??

Has anyone figured out a 100% working solution? I can't get it to work on my Windows 8.1 laptop.. I am doing the exact same things as the OP does..

I have had similar problems with the new Obsidian v4.  After much consternation, realized I had windows updates not performed. Ran updates.  Shut-down, restarted and all was working well.

Nah, it doesn't hafta be online. I don't have internet access from my place, but as long as I have the files to load onto the board, I'm just fine without internet.

Ya know, it's weird. I have windows "hate-point-one" as well, but I have very little trouble. I installed as admin, per the recommendation, and launch it from the desktop environs.
On my ASUS (which has eaten two hard-drives -- I hate it and love it at the same time) there are 3 USB ports. Two are marked "SS" next to the little trident-thingie icon (I'm told that's USB 3.0), and one is just plain-janey USB, I guess. My Obsidian board flat-out refuses to talk to the 3.0 ports, but it does just fine -- sometimes with a little rejiggering both plugs -- on the regular ol' USB port.
That all being said, I could just be due some dumb luck. I hope I helped, or at least failed to make things worse. :)

Here's my Windows 8.1 ritual for connecting to Obsidian:

1.  Reboot
2.  Plug the mini-USB connector into the saber
3.  Power on the saber
4.  Right-click and "Run as administrator" the launcher (v1.04)
5.  Plug the USB connector into the computer's USB 2.0 port
6.  Slowly and slightly move the USB connector (computer end) within its port, either towards you or away from you (not in and out), until the Launcher detects the saber and connects to it. 

Note: I'm using the USB cable Ultrasabers supplied with the saber.

Thanks,
Cliff