USB connection

[traveler218]

Has anyone had a problem with connecting the Xoom to a PC via the USB port? My Windows 7 machine does not recognize the device. It does not even attempt to install a driver. It acts like the port is dead.

[jasnmar]

Have you downloaded the drivers from motorola yet?

If not go to http://www.motorola.com/Support/US-EN/Support-Homepage/Software_and_Drivers/USB-and-PC-Charging-Driv... and click the link that says Download Motorola 4.9.0 Driver with MotoHelper*. Install the drivers, reboot and try connecting again.

Jason

[traveler218]

No, I had not. I just did though and installed it but it doesn't seem to have helped.

[traveler218]

I'd tried plugging the Zoom into my wife's windows XP machine and it works fine, so I know it's not the XOOM. Problem is my wife works from home and is on her computer most of the time. Besides, her machine does not have the files on it that I want to copy. I would also like to backup the device on my computer. Any ideas why it won't work with windows 7?

[#5]

Maybe you could try connecting to someone else's computer who is running Windows 7 to see if that's the problem or if it has something to do with your security or some setting, etc.

[jasnmar]

That's surprising. Most of the people I've heard from have had problems with XP, but win 7 has worked fine.

I had a lot of trouble getting things set up for my Droid 2 on win 7, but once things got setup I've not had a problem with the xoom.

The best advice I can give is tomake sure your xoom is unplugged, uninstall the drivers, reboot, install the drivers, reboot and then try connecting.

If you don't need to move very much you can try dropbox, rather than connecting directly, or something like Bluetooth file transfer.

Jason

[kazetsukai]

The Xoom does not mount like a normal flash drive/partition, instead it utilizes MTP to do file transfers. On Linux, I had to install the mtp-tools package to get around this. While command line, (example: mtp-sendfile) they're my style and work well.

MTP grants the Xoom potential encryption and DRM features (as well as not tying up the internal memory to the host computer) at the expense of a good out-of-box storage solution. I don't think it was a very smart move, but that's just me. I'd rather reformat the device to use all 32GB once the SD card slot begins working.

[traveler218]

So on Windows 7 how do i access the device? I'm afraid I have never heard of the MTP format.

[kazetsukai]

MTP is not a format, it is a protocol, a language for devices to talk to eachother. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol for information on MTP.

Here's a common question to most MTP troubles: Are you connecting the Xoom via a USB hub, or directly to the computer?

[AntonioC_VZW · Accepted solution]

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traveler218 wrote:

So on Windows 7 how do i access the device? I'm afraid I have never heard of the MTP format.

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Please refer to the step by step instructions provided in the link below:

http://bit.ly/gK18Ui

[traveler218]

I have followed the instructions several times (in the hope of getting different resultsMy device is still not recognized by my Win7 computer.

[leecason]

Traveler218,

What version of Windows 7 are you running? On my Home Premium 64-bit machine (a Gateway laptop) I plugged the Xoom in and it worked without any intervention by me. I don't know if any driver was installed when I plugged it in or not. I tried turning on the developer debug support ("Settings" | "Applications" | "USB debugging" ) on my Xoom to see what else I could find out.  When I did this, as expected, it changed the type of connections being made and attempted to install and configure additional drivers.

It seems that the Xoom uses the default Windows 7 USB Composite Device driver for supporting file transfer between the computer and the Xoom. But in developer debug mode Windows 7 also installed a Xoom driver set. The driver details are listed below. If you have the same version of Windows, then you probably should have the same files. Note that even though I'm running 64-bit Windows, the 32-bit driver is used successfully.

Connecting in USB debugging mode also caused Windows 7 to create a new MTP (media transfer protocol) device it named MZ600, and attempt to locate and install drivers for the device. However, no appropriate device drivers were located either automatically or manually. I turned USB debugging on my Xoom back off, but my Windows 7 machine still connects it as an MTP device with a missing driver. I am not sure if it did this before I turned on USB debugging or not, but without USB debugging turned on, Windows 7 did not attempt and fail to install drivers for a device named MZ600. Regardless of the USB debugging setting being on or off, I am able to copy files between my Xoom and laptop.

On annoying "feature" that is probably a result of MTP is that Windows 7 is trying to be smart by checking the file type against what is registered for the device. Of course, since there isn't an MTP driver installed, there is no confirmation that the file type is supported, so I get this useless and annoying message on every file copy that says "Your device might not be able play or view this file" (yeah, nice, Microsoft can't affort correct English grammar in their products because they don't have enough money--or maybe the message is from Xoom?).   Fortunately this is just noise and no indication of whether the files are actually supported on the Xoom or not.

If you still haven't been able to get your USB cable to work, here are some things I would try:

1. Use a different USB port if you have multiple ports available. Some newer computers have USB 3 running on some ports that don't quite work correctly on USB 2 devices.
2. Confirm that the cable to you got to work on your wife's XP machine is in fact the one that you are trying to get to work now. Not all USB cables are created equal, which seems ironic since the U in USB is supposed to stand for "Universal".
3. Try turning USB debugging on for your Xoom and then connect and see if Windows 7 attempts to install device drivers for an MTP MZ600 device. It will likely fail like it did for me, but in the process this may cause Windows 7 to fix the USB Composite Device or Xoom drivers.

Details on the drivers found on my laptop, as well as some references I read while researching this subject are included below for reference.

Good luck.

Lee

USB Composite Device Properties
---------------------------------------------------------
"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\usbccgp.sys"

Provider: Microsoft Corporation
File Version: 6.1.7600.16385(win7_rtm.090713-1255)
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows



Xoom Properties
---------------------------------------------------------

Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 6/21/2006
Driver Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows

Driver File Details
---------------------------------------------------------

"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\UMDF\WpdMtpDr.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\winusb.sys"
"C:\Windows\System32\drivers\WUDFRd.sys"
"C:\Windows\System32\WpdMtp.dll"
"C:\Windows\System32\WpdMtpUS.dll"



Wikipedia article on MTP is informative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

MTP Properties
---------------------------------------------------------

Model: MTP
Categories: Portable Media Player

Hardware
---------------------------------------------------------
Name            Type
MZ600            Other devices
USB Composite Device    Universal Serial Bus controllers
Xoom            Portable Devices


Info on MTP devices
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff564480%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

The MTP Compliance Test - Media Players validates compliance with the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), Revision 1.0. This suite of tests ensures that devices use the MTP class driver that ships with Windows 7. This tool is directed at Portable Media Player devices that connect using the MTP protocol. This test is used to validate compliance with defined protocols based on requirements documented in the Windows Logo Program.

[leecason]

UPDATE: I went to the URL posted by jasnmar above, downloaded and installed the Motorola driver that now includes Xoom support. After installing this driver, I connected my Xoom to my Windows 7 laptop, and this time I got a different driver installed, which was called "Mot Composite ADB Interface".  This did remove the driver error from the MTP device in control panel, but didn't get rid of the annoying warnings that the file types may not work.

Lee

[traveler218]

Which UTRL? I went back t the Motorola sight (http://www.motorola.com/consumers/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=bda09ec8009a0210VgnVCM1000008806b00aRCRD) and downloaded the drivers again, but they were the same version as before (4.9.0) and they don't say anything about having Xoom support. I reinstalled anyway and my computer still does not recognize the xoom as being plugged in.

[jcox]

My Vista desk top did not recognize the Xoom at first either and I spent some time at Motorola site looking for drivers too.  In the end I switched the USB cable that I use with my Droid X and plugged in the cable that came with the Xoom and my computer immediately found the device.  It may be an issue that the Xoom does not charge via USB, sometime small things cause big problems.

[traveler218]

I have tried both, neather one worked. Also, as I said before I connected to a windows XP machine and it worked fine.

[kazetsukai]

Sounds like a driver bug. If you haven't already, contact Motorola support and have them open a ticket.

Be prepared to give them exact steps on what you did.

[traveler218]

I sort of gave up on my Win 7 professional 64 bit machine. I tried debug on, debug off. I tried installing the 4.9.0 driver and I even tried multiple ports on my computer but no joy. I only have the one cable that came with the Zoom and it works both on my laptop and on my wife's desktop, both of which are XP machines. I was able to set up the SDK on my laptop and unlock and root my Zoom. I installed the tiamat kernel (very 1.6.1) and now I am running overclocked at 1.5 Ghz, NICE!

For general file transfer with the win7 computer I use ES File Explorer with a wireless connection. That works very nice and even appears to transfer at a higher rate.