No USB driver for Giga R1 on Windows 7

Official Hardware Mega GIGA R1 WiFi
1

I can't get the Giga R1 to work on my x64 Windows 7 laptop as there is never a driver installed for it. It is always shown as Giga with a yellow exclamation mark under Other devices in Device Manager.

I followed the instructions here https://forum.arduino.cc/t/no-usb-driver-for-my-giga-r1-board/1109839
regarding uninstalling and re-installing the board but that didn't help. The post then goes on to talk about IDE 2.x but that can't be installed on Windows 7 so it doesn't really help.

When I try to install the driver manually by right clicking on the device, choosing Update Driver Software and navigating to ..\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\hardware\mbed_giga\4.1.5\drivers\prewin10 I get a message saying "Windows could not find driver software for your device.".

I tried all the above on another x64 Windows 7 desktop machine and that doesn't work either.

I can see and program the board using a Windows 11 PC running IDE 1.8.19 but that is used as my HTPC and I don't want to use it as a development machine.

Is there a driver available for Windows 7 for this board? I've done a Google search but can't seem to find one.

thanks,
Michael

2

I can't help but it might help others to help you if you can provide the details of the error related to the yellow exclamation mark.

3

Does Win7 have an Install option when you right-click the .inf in this folder?

4

When I right click on the icon and select properties I get this:
image

It does but when I select it I get:
image
btw the file is arduino_mbed.inf

5

Hi @dl144. If you like, you can using a tool named "Zadig" to install the driver on Windows 7:

  1. Download the "Zadig" driver installation tool from this website:
    http://zadig.akeo.ie/
  2. Connect the GIGA R1 WiFi board to your computer with a USB cable.
  3. Start "Zadig".
  4. Select "Giga (Interface 0)" from the dropdown menu in the "Zadig" window.
    :exclamation: If it doesn't show up on the menu, then select Options > List all devices from the Zadig menus and check again.
  5. Click the up or down arrows next to the Driver selection box on the right side until you see "USB Serial (CDC)".
  6. Click the "Replace Driver" button.
  7. Wait for the driver replacement process to finish.
  8. Close the "Zadig" window.

I don't have time to test it with the GIGA R1 WiFi so I have no idea whether it will work for that board, but I did personally verify that it works for the UNO R4 WiFi so there is hope at least.

6

Thanks for that, my Windows 7 laptop can now see the Giga and upload sketches to it.

I had to run Zadig twice, once while the Giga was in normal run mode and again while it was in bootloader mode. This created two two ports under Ports (COM & LPT) in Device Manager, COM15 for run mode and COM18 for bootloader mode.

I had been able to connect to the Giga using Linux Mint running in a VM on my W7 laptop but that was far from ideal. This is much better.
Thanks again for your help.

7

You are welcome. I'm glad it is working now.

Regards, Per