question

I tried the directions in this post to the letter numerous times - Windows and the Device manager still won't use the MK3 ... the driver is unavailable

I have tried every option numerous times with no luck.

When following the instructions above from Mathias - there are numerous folders and files in the folder USBDrivers ... do I select the whole folder or a specific file inside that folder?? I have tried both ways and reinstalled many times. The time wasted now is considerable.

Would appreciate some support and direction that works from Victron?

From memory, so I may well be wrong.

I had to do this on a Windows machine, not Mac/parallels. I pointed the windows driver selector to the highest point in the driver tree. Windows did the rest.

I've a feeling I had to download the drivers, they weren't found automatically. https://www.victronenergy.de/support-and-downloads/software

They're the VE.Direct/mk3 usb drivers

Thanks @kevgermany. I tried downloading the VE.Direct/mk3 usb driver but still Windows can't find the relevant driver.

So now another 6 hours in the hole getting nowhere, complete uninstall and reinstall of everything, trying every bit of available advice, numerous times

Come on Victron, numerous previous posts end with no resolution for people having issues on connecting the MK3 on both Windows and Mac machines.

"Driver is unavailable". "The drivers for this device are not installed". "There is no compatible drivers for this device"

looks like you have the right file. Did you run it?

I downloaded and ran the latest version.

Then I deleting mine from windows. (control panel devices and printers) Then replugged it. Just worked as expected. Guess you can't see it in the control panel or device list, mine came up on USB port COM3.

Sorry, can't help further. Might be a funny with the emulation software.

Suggest you contact the distributor if no-one else answers here.

@Greg0448

Unfortunately the new Mac M1 processors are ARM based and not intel, therefore it does not run standard windows 10 or windows 11 inside Parallels. What you are running is a version of Windows 11 compiled to run on the ARM processor, and I believe still beta/early adopter status. What Microsoft calls Insider Preview,

While 9 times out of 10 most users will not find any issues, there are corner case when things do not work as expected or at all. Especially when related too low level drivers. At this stage there are no released low level drivers for the serial interface inside the MK3 which will load and install on Windows 11 ARM.

THIS IS NOT A VICTRON ISSUE.

The MK3 interface has a serial interface inside it, manufactured by a third party and Victron just supplier their driver with the VE.Config application.

I have managed to get hold of a beta set of drivers, which I shall be testing this weekend. I have been informed others have had success running the drivers inside Parallels, but they have not formally tested it.

If successful I am happy to share more details after the weekend.

However you will need to request them from the supplier (FTDI) direct, and agree to no onward distribution of the drivers. A search of the net will also find instructions, What has been supplied is about 2 or 3 release behind their released drivers so no idea what may or may not work. They are working on a formal release, but unlikely soon.

This is some of the information I have received..

You could try the beta FTDI ARM64 driver which was developed on Windows 10 but seems to also work on Windows 11.

Here is the ARM64 driver that was tested on the Lenovo Yoga C630 running Windows 10.

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Note that we are in the process of upgrading this to 2.12.36.4 with the hope that this can be WHQL certified to allow installation without having to disable the driver signature enforcement.

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We cannot support any virtual type OS. There can be all sorts of problems that are out of our control.
You can find our supported drivers here:
 
https://ftdichip.com/drivers/
 
If your target OS is Windows, please use it directly on that OS without any virtual machine.
 
If you still can’t get CDM v2.12.32.B3 for ARM64 driver to work, then you can wait for the upcoming release of 2.12.36.4 for ARM64. This is currently in development.

So until released drivers are available you will not get any support on these drivers!

@Greg0448 and @kevgermany

I can confirm, after much playing around that the beta drivers work, and I successfully ran VE.Config on Windows 11 Arm in a Parallels VM running on a Mac Book Pro M1.

You need to go through the process of disabling driver signing. lots of examples on how to do this on the web. Then install the drivers, edit the registry, remove the USB adapter, re-insert the USB adapter and re-install the drivers.

A lot of work and if driver signing is re-enabled then the drivers stop working.

The best bet is to email FTDI support at support5@ftdichip.com and ask for the beta driver details.

@mvader (Victron Energy) FYI.

Thanks @Bathnm for the detailed answer, that explains a lot. So I reinstalled everything on my old intel based macbook and it seems like its working, at least Windows is now recognising the MK3 device. Have yet to get back on site to confirm.

In the future I will look to trying with the updated drivers for the ARM based systems.

The official ARM drivers are now available at https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/

I was able to get them installed without an issue, but did had to reboot windows before VEconfig was able to communicate over this port.

I got this working for me on Windows 11 via Parallels on a Mac with a M1 chip.

When following the driver instructions to directly apply the driver to the MK3-USB device it kept saying the downloaded filers it did not contain drivers for this device.

The work around is to open the Windows Device Manager then click the "Add Drivers" icon at the top of the window. Point it tto the ARM driver downloaded from https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/ and it will install the drivers and then it works.

I suspect the FTDI drivers are higher up in the device 'chain' preventing direct installation to the MK3-USB device.

Thanks for the information in this thread - I got really frustrated after trying stuff for hours before reading this and actually went and bought the cheapest Windows laptop I could at Wal-Mart to get the job done, which I'll now be returning. Many of those hours were spent with me not realizing that the MK3-USB adapter I had wasn't working because the mini-USB connector had broken loose from the circuit board inside...I had to open it up to realize this and then order a replacement, which now comes with a built-in USB-A cable. The *real* solution would be for Victron to add assistant support to VictronConnect, and/or to release a MacOS version of VE.Configure, and/or at a minimum update their USB Drivers included with VE.Configure to include a driver for Windows on ARM.

I am running Windows 11 for ARM using UTM (free) on MacOS 13 (Ventura) on an M1. It works surprisingly well - much faster than any native Windows laptop I've seen including ARM ones. When the virtual machine is running and you plug in the MK3-USB, it nicely just pops up and asks if you want to connect it to the virtual machine. You don't need Windows Insider Preview anymore - the regular released version now has everything. VE.Configure installs and works just fine, but as mentioned, ignore Victron's USB Drivers for now. The thing to realize about the Device Manager is that there are actually two different devices that need the driver updated. I think the second one only shows up after the first one is updated. This same thing happened on the Windows 11 laptop using the Victron drivers so may be a Windows 11 thing. I really don't use Windows at all in many years except when needed for very rare situations like this, so somebody else may know better, but if you've updated the driver once and it's still not working, know that there's a second device that also needs updated. Both will show up as MK3-USB Interfaces, though after updating to use the FTDI driver, it shows up simply as USB Serial Port. Doesn't matter to VE.Configure, it works after this is done.

Now that I've had the fun of buying two Victron-branded MK3-USB devices due to the first one failing, I have to wonder if I couldn't have saved money buying an FTDI device directly or from some other vendor using the same chip, and maybe even gotten a modern USB-C plug directly on the thing. Anyways, I digress...thank you for posting the FTDI driver link!

Just here to add what worked for me.

• Mac Pro M1
• Parallels Windows 11
• MK3 USB-C

1. Download driver from: https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/ and unzip it.
   1. I downloaded: "Windows (Desktop) 2.12.36.4A"
2. Open the "Device Manager" in Windows, and click "Add Drivers"

• Point it to the "ARM" folder from the unzipped downloaded folder
• Plug the MK3 in, port shows up

Thanks for the help figuring this out!