Calibre not seeing Kobo in Windows 10 Preview builds

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JDesat

I've tried the option DNSB gave; backup on a different machine, format on the Win10 Anniversary machine and restore the backup from the other machine. But every time I do that, when I plug back into the Anniversary computer it tells me I need to format the drive again. Do I need to do the kobo setup before restoring the backup or something?

Not sure about that. What I found was that I was requested to reformat the drive after I had already formatted it in Disk Management. Did you get that message when you attempted to open the drive before ejecting from the Anniversary machine after formatting in Disk Management? Even if you don't, it might be worth trying before you eject.

[JDesat]

No, I didn't get a request to reformat after I'd already formatted but before I removed it from the machine. I'm able to get the kobo to the step where I can connect it to the Anniversary machine fine and it is detected properly, but when I go to the old machine and upload the files from there that's when it gets screwy. Technically I could just use the Anniversary machine and re-upload from Calibre, but I don't know exactly which books I had, what order they were in, and I won't have the info on where I was in the middle of reading several dozen of them... It's more a pain in the ass at this point than it is something actually stopping me from using the kobo.

[JDesat]

Finally got it to work. Didn't really do much different aside from keeping the few files that kobo desktop put onto the kobo when I copied the backup back onto the kobo... if that made sense.

[snoeki]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The real test will be if someone can do a factory reset on the Kobo and see if the issue stays gone or if it re-occurs.

I will test this today

[Dave R]

Help please -
I followed the instructions to format my H2O on Windows 10 using FAT32. That worked. Windows could see the KOBO drive and I copied back the folders that were there originally.
However on ejecting the Kobo it was stuck showing the "Connected" screen. I gave it several minutes with no change so switched it off. Now it will not boot at all - just a blank screen with the on light flashing.
How can I get it to boot?

Thanks
Dave

[Dave R]

After 30 mins or so of blank screen a "Critical Error "message came up which was good as that allowed a factory reset. I now have the Kobo set up again over wifi so will try again with the set up and see if I can get it connected to Windows 10 and download books via ADE

Dave

[snoeki]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The real test will be if someone can do a factory reset on the Kobo and see if the issue stays gone or if it re-occurs.

A factory reset is giving problems again, you cannot access the device anymore on the anniversary edition, you can without problems on windows 10 without this update.

You can reformat it again... but if you don't have any device anymore without windows 10 anniversary you have a problem.

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by Dave R

I followed the instructions to format my H2O on Windows 10 using FAT32. That worked. Windows could see the KOBO drive and I copied back the folders that were there originally.
However on ejecting the Kobo it was stuck showing the "Connected" screen. I gave it several minutes with no change so switched it off. Now it will not boot at all - just a blank screen with the on light flashing.

There are several possibilities why formatting might go wrong...

1) it was formatted incorrectly. It must be FAT32, directly without partition table. I do not know how Windows decides whether to create a partition table or not; most USB Sticks have a partition table (single partition), but Kobo does not have one.

2) Kobo itself didn't manage to umount the FAT32 before exporting the USB device. This happens for example when you are running mods that block the FAT32 from being umounted, or when connecting USB from within a KEPUB [in this case the umount happens only after some delay]. In this case it results in filesystem corruption which might cause the device to crash, or to be stuck for a long time attempting to run a filesystem recovery.

3) Device was not ejected/umounted properly before pulling the USB cable. At best this causes some missing file, worst it will kick the Kobo into factory reset mode.

Some time ago I had posted a small mod that displays a smiley :-) face if the user partition was umounted correctly, and a :-( face if it was not. Kobo itself does not check at all whether umount worked - it does a lazy umount which just doesn't do anything while the device is still in use.

[Dave R]

Originally Posted by JDesat

Finally got it to work. Didn't really do much different aside from keeping the few files that kobo desktop put onto the kobo when I copied the backup back onto the kobo... if that made sense.

Are you able to explain exactly what you did. I am getting the same as you were - I format as FAT 32. But if I unplug the reader and plug it back in - it asks me to format again

Dave

[JDesat]

I actually ended up using a bit of both solutions found on this thread.

I used the partition tool pointed to in message 46 but then I basically followed DNSB's steps. The only difference was that, after formatting, I unplugged the kobo and went through the steps to set it up again (choosing english and connecting it with kobo desktop to reload the dictionaries, etc.). After that I was able to go to the non-Anniversary machine and upload the backup to the kobo again without a problem. The only issue was that almost anytime it asked me if I wanted to over-right a file from the backup onto the kobo I chose no, and kept the files that kobo desktop had just uploaded from setup.

I hope that helps!

[hancor]

Hi all,

I am using Windows 10 build 1607 version 14393.10 or Anniversary Update.
Before that I was among the Insider Preview builds.

My wife couldn't borrow any library books as the ADE couldn't find the drive via Windows 10.

Before I found your page I did the whole gamut, of factory reset, uninstall and reinstall Callibre, Kobo Reader, ADE, and 3M Cloud Library along with much hair pulling.

I went out and bought an 64 GB SDXC memory card for $20 formatted to FAT32 with the Rufus tool v2.10 Insert memory card to Kobo Aura HD recognized no problem by Kobo and Windows 10

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...sk/Rufus.shtml

Voila, the 64GB partition was recognized. I could copy books to the new drive but because of DRM you couldn't open them as the main drive still wasn't recognized.

Found the tips in post #46 and since I owned the full program, I thought Windows 10 is on a UEFI enabled bios, so try a GPT partition with FAT32!

Drives were recognized by Windows 10, but Kobo Aura HD has a conniption and goes through full factory reset. Yada, yada, yada.

Back to the well one more time with Partition Minitool, this time did the partition as an MBR with FAT32 file system.

Finally, windows 10 ver14393.10 recognized the internal drive, DRM was happy as ADE recognized the drive and all the library books transferred seamlessly.

Success, sweetness and light! REMEMBER THE PARTITION HAS TO BE:

MBR (Master Boot Record) partition with FAT32; otherwise ugliness will ensue.

Hope this helps some other poor sods...

[JSWolf]

Is there a way of replacing whatever program Kobo is using to format the partition with a version that would format the partition such that Win 10U will see it properly?

Another idea I have is to replace the USB driver files from the AU with the ones from the November Update. But first copy the ones from the AU in case you need to put them back.

[borgia]

Hi.

I have no problem to try.

How can i get the old drivers???

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Is there a way of replacing whatever program Kobo is using to format the partition with a version that would format the partition such that Win 10U will see it properly?

Possible yes. But unknown whether it would help.

Kobo itself just uses busybox for mkfs.vfat and dosfstools fsck. Actually I copied Debian ARM binaries of dosfstools over and that version of fsck corrupted my user partition in the end... maybe I did something wrong.

Blindly introducing new binaries for these things can just as well cause new problems. It requires a lot of testing - and doesn't help in understanding the root cause of the problem.

If we knew what exactly is causing the issue in the first place, maybe there is a fix that does not require reformatting, that would be the best. Kobo should be able to get an expert (developers of the mentioned tools, people who know FAT filesystem really well) to advise them on this issue. If it keeps affecting all their readers it's certainly important enough to not blindly muddle through.

Let's see what the next firmware update does if anything, it should be soon since new devices coming too?

Or maybe it will be fixed on windows side after all... looking at some windows forums, there seem to be issues with more devices than just Kobo

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

Possible yes. But unknown whether it would help.

Kobo itself just uses busybox for mkfs.vfat and dosfstools fsck. Actually I copied Debian ARM binaries of dosfstools over and that version of fsck corrupted my user partition in the end... maybe I did something wrong.

Blindly introducing new binaries for these things can just as well cause new problems. It requires a lot of testing - and doesn't help in understanding the root cause of the problem.

If we knew what exactly is causing the issue in the first place, maybe there is a fix that does not require reformatting, that would be the best. Kobo should be able to get an expert (developers of the mentioned tools, people who know FAT filesystem really well) to advise them on this issue. If it keeps affecting all their readers it's certainly important enough to not blindly muddle through.

Let's see what the next firmware update does if anything, it should be soon since new devices coming too?

Or maybe it will be fixed on windows side after all... looking at some windows forums, there seem to be issues with more devices than just Kobo

I do wish I had access to a Win 10AU system. I'd try the copy the system files from pre-AU to the AU to see how that works.