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Why is my stm32f4 discovery board debugger acting erratically when connected to certain computers?

arnold_w
Senior
Posted on December 21, 2017 at 09:19

For a long time I have been working with stm32f4 discovery board MB997C on my computer without problems. In fact, I've been running 2 boards simultaneously on my PC and it has worked great with both STM32 ST-LINK Utility and debugging in Eclipse. Recently, I had to buy more development boards and they were of type MB997D and I've been informed that these newer boards use debugger version 2-1 instead of 2-0. I recently also had a harddrive crash and then I upgraded my operating system to Windows 10 so there are a few new parameters to take into account. Nowadays, my new development board (MB997D) works great, but my MB997C works erratically. If I try to connect to it with STM32 ST-LINK Utility, then the following happens. When I click Connect, the application freezes for a few seconds and then I receive an error message. The error message it different depending on which version of STM32 ST-LINK Utility I use (I've tried several versions). A newer version of STM32 ST-LINK Utility advises me to go to Target->Settings and choose Connect Under Reset. If I do so, then it works, but it takes a long time to do this because it's like the STM32 ST-LINK Utility freezes for a few seconds as soon as I click something. When I try to debug in Eclipse, then I get the following error message:

Error in final launch sequence

Failed to execute MI command:

-target-select remote localhost:3333

Error message from debugger back end:

localhost:3333: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

Failed to execute MI command:

-target-select remote localhost:3333

Error message from debugger back end:

localhost:3333: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

localhost:3333: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

I am using GDB OpenOCD Debugger and have installed the following:

C:\Program Files\GNU ARM Eclipse\OpenOCD\0.10.0-201601101000-dev

C:\Program Files\GNU ARM Eclipse\Build Tools\2.8-201611221915

C:\Program Files (x86)\GNU Tools ARM Embedded\6 2017-q1-update

The same development board works just fine on my colleague's computer, both with STM32 ST-LINK Utility and Eclipse. Does anybody know what's wrong? I have tried different versions of STM32 ST-LINK Utility and I have tried a later version of GNU Tools ARM Embedded called GNU Tools MCU Embedded, but nothing changed. I have absolutely no knowledge of debuggers (or compilers) so please use basic language terms in your replies.

1 REPLY 1
arnold_w
Senior
Posted on December 21, 2017 at 09:53

I found the problem, another version 2-0 debugger, whose target was powered off, was also connected to the computer (through a hub that was directly visible to me). When I disconnected this, everything worked great again.