PFE and Windows compatibility (Win7 and Win 8)

[John Donovan]

We recently had a customer ask us about a problem with the communication between his Probe Software computer and his Bruker computer (see above post).

He said that he solved it by allowing Windows to install some updates it was waiting to install, and re-booting his computer: "I solved the 201 error message. The PfE computer wanted to do Windows updates and it apparently interferes with PFE communicating with Bruker.  Works fine again."

I'm not an expert on Windows updates, but I don't think that pending Windows OS updates would do anything to cause a problem in network communications, but I could be wrong.

But I will say that sometimes (every few months or so), the instrument electronics itself may need a re-boot to unfragment the board memory and re-load the firmware.

The same could apply to some Windows computers with limited RAM. When one has a limited amount of RAM, memory fragmentation can be an issue. It's the old "Did you try turning it off and on again?" advice: