Event 25 sbp2port Detected Old or Out-Of-Date Firmware External Hard Drive Firewire FireLite Portable HDD
Ah, more Windows 7 glitches. This one is particularly irritating because it is caused by Microsoft Windows 7 trying to be smarter than the user. In general, I don’t mind when the operating system takes care of me, but when it does, I expect a way to be able to undo what it is doing, because what some engineer somewhere thinks I need, isn’t at all what I need. This is especially true when it comes to "protecting" the user or the computer system.
Today’s drama is brought to you by an older, but not ancient external hard drive called the SmartDisk Firelite external hard drive firewire version. It’s just a 20 GB portable drive, but it works just fine, can get its power from the firewire port, and holds more than the average USB keydrive; plus, it copies files faster.
As expected, Windows 7 detected the new firewire disk when I plugged it in and installed a generic driver for it. It mounted the volume, and gave it a drive letter. This is all great, and frankly shows just how good Windows 7 is as a PC operating system.
I started copying over the files that I wanted to have on the Firewire drive. Everything was going just fine. New folders and files were appearing, and everything was working great. Then, all of the sudden, the Firelite disk drive powers down in the middle of the copy. Teracopy keeps trying for a minute, but eventually fails.
A look inside of Event Viewer -> System shows an Event 25 Error Source sbp2port. The description of the error says that:
The driver has detected a device with old or out-of-date firmware. The device will not be used.
What the–?
The device was working just fine, and I was happy with it, so don’t disable it just because you don’t like it’s firmware.
Technically, this one isn’t on Microsoft or Windows 7, because this particular portable external HDD is not using the most up to date specification, and technically, that makes it not compatible with Windows 7.
But, it was WORKING! Just leave it alone. Don’t randomly try and detect stuff to disable. If it isn’t causing any errors (it wasn’t) then just leave it alone. Don’t even examine it. You don’t need to know what it is or what it is doing if I am using it without causing system problems.
The bummer is that searching for an answer took forever. The almost always useless "Event Log Online Help" had no information. It almost never does except for the most common no brainer problems that usually get solved before anyone even looks in the Event Viewer. Microsoft’s Windows 7 Help Center was no help either, and it appears that SmartDisk has gone under / been bought out by Verbatim, who have no driver updates past Windows XP for the device, let alone a firmware upgrade.
Fortunately I eventually stumbled upon a related thread about Windows 7 Firewire problems on the IT Pro forums which noted that if you can "update" the IEEE 1397 Bus Host Controller driver from the 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller driver to the 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) driver if you go into Device Manger and choose to manually update the driver and then select one manually on your computer as opposed to trying any of the "Automatically Search" options which just go out and try and update the default driver.
So far, this has worked like a champ. Apparently the legacy driver either doesn’t care that the firmware is out-of-date, or maybe it doesn’t even check. Either way, my firewire hard drive works just fine now without some nosy system process coming along and deciding it is too old to keep working correctly on my computer.
Did Windows Update Fix Logitech Mouse Cruise Control Issue In Firefox
Update: And we’re back again 
It looks like the issue is caused by having an unsaved “custom theme.” Don’t think you made a custom theme? Think again.
Any change to the “personalize” settings like background image (desktop image), colors, font-size, etc… results in a custom theme being generated with those changes. In other words, if your desktop background is not a stock photo that came with Windows 7, you have made a custom theme. So, that picture of your kids, or dog, or cats, or whatever, is a customization, and it has not been saved with the rest of your personal choices as a theme yet.
Click save and give it any name you like. My Logitiech mouse buttons started working again in Firefox right after I did that.
Update 02/13/2010: It appears that my cruise up and cruise down buttons are once again broken inside of Firefox. Still working on it…again…
Not long ago, I complained bitterly about how disabling transparency in Windows 7 caused cruise up and cruise down to stop working in Firefox. My wireless mouse, part of a wireless keyboard / mouse combo from Logitech, had until recently been cruising (scrolling fast) up and down within Firefox with no trouble. Then, shortly after the latest Firefox update (I didn’t notice right away, so I can’t say for sure) these mouse buttons stopped working.
As it turns out Logitech’s keyboard and mouse mapping software, called SetPoint, has numerous well documented errors and glitches inside of it. For Logitech, it seems to be a low priority since the mass market user it targets doesn’t generally make use of all the advanced features modern mouse and keyboards have. It is misleading to advertise that their product does something that actually doesn’t work, but that is another matter.
Windows 7 Update Fixes Keyboard Function Keys or Shortcuts
The January 26, 2010 Windows Update pushed out by Microsoft includes “stability and reliability” updates including on that targets “Keyboard function keys or keyboard shortcuts…that may not work correctly.”
This is interesting because the Cruise Control feature on my Logitech mouse is not the default setting for those buttons. Rather, it is a function assigned to those buttons manually through UberOptions which is the software that Logitech should be releasing instead of the choke-ware it puts out.
This mouse button assignment works very similarly to programming a keyboard function key or shortcut. One goes into the UberOptions interface and the selects which mouse button to program and then what functionality to assign to that button.
I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it would be interesting if this Microsoft fix corrected the mouse button error in Firefox that I was getting.
Have a nice day.
(Needed to add that last part to avoid the Google no man’s land of sub-300 word pages of content.
Windows 7 Release Candidate Expiration Coming Soon
Plenty of people downloaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate over the last six months or so. It made plenty of sense, of course. Since so many people hated Vista, there were not really any options for those looking to upgrade from Windows XP. That, plus the fact that Windows 7 RC was free to use made it a very attractive proposition for both those with technical reasons to upgrade and those looking to get Windows for free for a while.
Like all good things, this one must come to an end.
Starting on March 1, 2010, computers running Windows 7 RC will start automatically shutting down every two hours as a way to nag remind you to go out an pay for a real version of Windows 7 and upgrade your beta release candidate. In other words, the free ride is over.
For computer users willing to go on through the auto shutdown process for a few months, the Windows 7 RC operating system will go “Not Genuine” on June 1st. Even that isn’t the end of the world, although you will lose some of your personalization, like wallpaper, and a This copy of Windows is not genuine will be displayed in the corner of your screen. More importantly, however, the not-genuine version of Windows will start getting locked out of important updates and new features, so if you don’t feel like paying, go find a RTM version or OEM version out on some torrent site. (You pirate scum!)
You have been warned…
Have a nice day.
Cruise Control Buttons Stop Working in Firefox
What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?!?
Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder what is it that makes computers so difficult?
Today, I noticed that my Cruise Down and Cruise Up buttons on my Logitech mouse stopped working in Firefox. The odd thing is that they continued to work fine in Chrome, IE, Word, and so on. But, for whatever reason, my Logitech Cruise Mouse buttons broke in Firefox.
Since there was recently an upgrade to Firefox, I figured there was some sort of glitch. My first guess was that someone’s accessibility settings or compatibility settings were messed up. Accessibility settings allow people with disabilities or impairments to tweak how a program behaves. For example, you can’t really expect someone with one arm to hold the shift key while clicking the mouse button. I’ve never really understood why this comes pre-installed on Windows and so many other systems when the percentage of users that need that functionality has to be pretty small. I’m guessing it is political.
So, I checked through all the Windows 7 Accessibility Settings, which have been nicely renamed to Ease of Use Settings. I wonder how many people see that heading and thing, "Gee, I’d like for my computer to be easier to use. I’ll go ahead and turn on the easier mode."
Anyway, it seems that none of those settings were on. Just to be sure I checked and unchecked all the boxes to get everything manually reset. Still, my cruise control scroll buttons wouldn’t work in Firefox.
Next up, an Internet search reveals that several Logitech products suffer from horrible glitches in their software implementations. Unfortunately, the cruise up and cruise down features are one of these trouble areas. However, none of the specific models mentioned matched up with my Logitech Wireless 3200 Laser Keyboard Mouse combo. Nonetheless, I read through several of the threads to find nothing that worked.
I had forgotten just how bad Logitech’s SetPoint software was, because I have been using UberObtions on my computer for a while now, and it actually does what SetPoint should do! Unfortunately, it turns out that while UberOptions fixes SetPoint glitches and allows any key to be mapped to any function setting, it doesn’t really do anything other than expose all the hidden options in the Logitech software. In other words, if it’s broke at the Logitech level, it’s broke in UberOptions too.
What kept bugging me was that the Cruise Control mouse buttons worked fine in all the other software. So, I dug into the about:config settings in Firefox. It seemed the cause of Firefox problem with cruise up and cruise down features would be in the settings related to mousewheel. Another troubleshooting article suggested using the mousewheel about:config settings to fix some other mouse button problems in Firefox. However, that didn’t work either.
Although I like Google Chrome, I’m not ready to give up my array of Firefox plugins that make it do exactly what I need it to do. My NoScript Whitelist alone would take forever to reconfigure on Chrome.
About the time I was ready to give up, I was 5 or 6 pages deep in the search results on Google for my tenth try at crafting a search that would return useful results instead of gamers that have trouble with WoW and Logitech mouse reviews, I stumbled upon a programmer forum where a user asked a question about a glitch in Firefox when something called wmode was set to transparent.
Sometime in the past few days, I had changed the wallpaper on my Windows 7 PC and used the Personalize feature to tweak some colors as well. I also turned off the transparency of the title bar, because it reminds me of a shower door, not a cool user interface design.
It was a long shot, but I was tired, and getting ready to just flat out give up fixing Cruise Control in Firefox on my Logitech wireless mouse. So, I right clicked the desktop, chose personalize, window color, and rechecked the box that says Enable Transparency. And, you can about guess what happened based on the first line of this post.
Yes, folks, Disabling Transparency breaks Cruise Control Mouse Buttons in Firefox if you are using a Logitech Wireless Mouse and the SetPoint software. Can you freaking believe it?
