Windows 10 Pro: USB IrDA adapter driver installation failed

Kalimera Dimitris,

I'm using a UWATEC SmartZ myself and a no-name IrDA-USB dongle that worked fine until Win8.1 but ceased to work under Windows 10. Since I literally depend my life on this dive computer, going back to Win8.1 seems the last resort.

Please post a report in the "Windows Feedback" tool, e.g. under "Hardware, Devices & Drivers" -> "USB-devices and connectivity" or just search for "IRDA" there and vote for the existing reports.

I have the UWATEC SmartComm, (circa 2003)  It had worked fine previously.  Then this OS, stopped that from working.  It is good to see the IrDA weigh in.

Hi,

I work for a company (Coolgear) that sells some of these IR adapters, and even some Polar compatible models.

We were taken completely by surprise by all of this. We had tested all of our IR adapters, even the older (and much better SigmaTel models), and they worked just fine with the Windows 10 pre-release editions and thought nothing further of it.

On launch day, none of them worked anymore. Come to find out, some time between the pre-release edition we tested with, and the final release, Microsoft removed *all* IRDA support from Windows. The entire IRDA stack is gone (imagine a computer coming without TCP/IP support!).

We've been in touch with MosChip/ASIX (the chip used in all of these adapters) and they have assured us that they will be working to provide us (and all of you!) with and updated driver & software, but can provide no ETA. Obviously they have to do a lot more work than simply fixing a few bugs an resubmitting for WHQL certification, so it may take quite a while.

Stay tuned to our website, we'll have the the driver posted there as soon as it becomes available, and in theory it *should* work with any MCS7780 based IRDA adapters, as we do not make firmware or EPROM changes to our units.

For those with the older (and frankly superior) SigmaTel units, I'm afraid that company has been out of business for a long time, so a driver update for Windows 10 is unlikely :(

www.coolgear.com

Sep 30th Edit:

Allan Cho from ASIX (The chip manufacture) has some info in this thread here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_apps-insider_other/irda-not-working-build-10166/4318715b-7939-48e5-a339-7665f2bd3fcd

I had the same problem and obviously I'm also annoyed by polar's poor service. Anyway, long story short, what I did to solve at least partially the problem was to install Polar Trainer5 in Ubuntu using Wine and follow this instructions: https://uschmuntu.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/polar-pulse-watch-infrared-communication-and-ubuntu/ to make the Irda work under linux.

Once you do this, you can keep transmitting you data from your watch to your computer. If you want to keep using the program under windows you can export the data as text.

Hopefully, this will help others.

It's also possible to use a virtual PC (with Linux or Widows 7/8) to use the USB IRDA adapter. The data directory must be on a shared folder between the 2 OS. But it does not really solve the problem

The solution is to be patient and wait until Microsoft issue an appropriate driver.

The suggestion of using virtual machines has been made a number of times already in this thread but the suggestion of using a shared folder is an innovative variation.

Being patient and waiting for MS to release a driver isn’t a solution anyone should cling to. The released version of Windows 10 does not have any IrDA support and there’s been nothing from MS to suggest they’re considering adding it in the future so it’s not possible for anyone to simply write a driver.

If Polar or another company decide to write a driver they’ll also have to write the software to provide IrDA support which was part of Windows in Windows 8/7/Vista/XP so the vendor will have a considerable task ahead to create software from scratch which they haven’t written previously. Very unlikely Polar will do this when their web site is so clear that they’re ditching support for those of us with InfraRed devices.

Yes, I had same exp.with VirtualBox. VMware Player worked, though. But this proved to be a clumsy work-around for me.

I dropped back to Win 8.1. I don't see any major advantages in Win 10 that outweigh the various disadvantage, namely lack of IrDA support

and yes various OTHER hardware support issues.

Hopefully, they will be worked out or the hardware will become obsolete before MS stops supporting Win 8.1.

"A sad, sad situation..."

Unconscionable that polar does not care!!

I feel mu h more inclined to blame Microsoft. They had preview versions of Windows 10 available for months and months and IrDA support was included. Then the release version came out and the support was gone. I imagine Polar were as surprised as everyone else and don't have the skills to write the software which Microsoft themselves didn't thing was adequate/require/other as part of their Windows. After all, if Microsoft had a problem (speculation on my part) with this operating system functionality, having developed it for more than a decade, then what chance have Polar got of writing it from scratch using the people/company who develop the odd application/driver/web app and have never even seen the Windows source code for this functionality...

Feeling very let down by Microsoft lack of communication and warning about this being removed before the final produce release.