MOTUnation.com

Hi all,

I've got three MTP AV USBs (all v2.0.1) connected to my Windows 10 workstation. All is fine, except that Windows occasionally re-assigns one of them to a new ID. [For example, "Port 1 on MTPAV" becomes "4-Port 1 on MTPAV."] I haven't moved any devices, but it seems that when power brown-outs or other random abnormalities happen (like accidentally powering things up out of order), Windows throws one or more of the devices to new IDs.

Unfortunately, this has a disastrous effect on my DAW templates and projects. All of the ports are scrambled, custom port names are lost, etc. It's a nightmare.

I realize this is more of a Windows support question, but is there a way to manually restore my devices to their original IDs? Is there any way to lock these devices so that Windows won't re-assign them?

Any advice is appreciated.

Same here!
Very annoying.
Any ideas?

Alright I think I found the solution.
It seems to be that those old machines have a dead internal battery (CR 2032) that requires to be replaced in order to communicate with PC and avoid reinstall on every computer reboot.

Yup, that did it! I replaced the CR2032 batteries in all three of my MIDI Timepiece AV USBs and have experienced no trouble since. I've even powered 'em up out of order - usually, an absolute no-no - and seen no problems.

Until now, my workaround was to purge all MOTU entries from the Windows device list whenever things got out o' whack. [To do this, check out Uwe Sieber's DEVICECLEANUPCMD command-line tool.] I would run a PURGEMOTU.BAT batch file and then re-power the devices in the desired order. This solution made things tolerable but was still a regular nuisance - maybe occurring once or twice per week.

Here's my batch script, just in case anybody else finds a need to clear MOTU devices from Windows. You'll need to tweak the DeviceCleanupCmd.exe filter patterns to match the Device IDs of the MOTU devices you actually have (and without false positives on anything else). The patterns included here work with the MTP AV USB but probably not all other MOTU products. Needless to say, you'll also want to update the instructions to suit your setup and requirements. For the record, my studio has three MTP AV USBs and I tend to forget which order they must be installed in to maintain compatibility with my historical Sonar, Cubase, etc., projects. With this in mind, understanding the script should be pretty easy.
So psyched!

THANK YOU!!!

Those little batteries can cause more weirdness than you can imagine.