"Lost communication with UPS" every few days

[Anonymous user]

Hello. We have a number of SMT1500IC UPSes, connected via USB cables to HP PCs running PowerChute Business Edition 9.2.5 that came with them. USB cables are all OK and nobody touches them. We turn the PCs off after work, but not the UPSes. APC services on the PCs work fine. But after every few days of normal operation, UPSes loose communication with PCBE.

Refresh in PCBE console doesn't help. Restart of APC services doesn't help. Changing USB cable and/or port doesn't help. Sometimes (rarely) they do re-establish communication all by themselves (without any action from our side) after quite some time, but that seems to be out of our control.

In most cases, it helps when we turn the affected UPS off and back on. But sometimes we must perform the "brain dead" reset. We have the same issue on all UPSes and it re-occurs quite often. I repeat, nobody disconnects and reconnects USB cables, nobody changes services, nobody touches anything.

Is that a known issue? Would a change of UPS firmware help? Would a change of PCBE version help?

Thanks and best regards.

[BillP]

Hi,

When PowerChute is communicating with the UPS properly open the control panel and go to power option. Click on change plan settings for the plan in use. Then click on change advanced power settings, USB settings, selective suspend settings and disable the setting/s. Click save changes to change the settings. 

[Anonymous user]

Hi Bill, thanks for the idea! Just changed the setting on all PCs, I'll let you know after a few days if that helped. Best regards.

[Anonymous user]

Hi Bill, here's the situation 5 days after changing the setting. Out of 10 UPS units, 7 were OK. On the remaining 3, I had to perform brain dead reset again; on one of them, I even had to wait a number of minutes after the reset for UPS status to become Online.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

[Anonymous user]

The SMT UPS line has user upgradeable firmware. You might want to check and see if all of them are running the most recent release.

https://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA164737/

The update will require turning the UPS off.

[BillP]

Hi,

I am glad the issue is resolved with some of the unit. when this happens on the remaining 3 would you check the UPS status using USBDeview.exe? 

Np9nu%2FK4WgB%2FSUgErx3Xcw%3D%3D.png

In the image you can see USBDeview.exe has discovered the UPS and is reporting the serial number. 

USBDeview.exe is a freeware that is available on line. I downloaded the app from nirsoft.net. 

[BillP]

Hi,

Would you please share what OS PCBE agent is running on and the model of the HP PCs. Also, are all of the systems HP?

Thanks,

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Hi Bill,

Unfortunately the problem is not solved - it just took them longer to fail... When I checked again after a few more days, 6 of the 7 were in lost state. Just one of 10 is still OK all the time from the USB power options change.

OS is Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit, version 10.0.17134.137, on all computers.

All computers are HP EliteDesk 800 G4 TWR. Some of them have i5 CPU and use built-in graphic adapter, and some i7 CPU and a stronger graphic card. No relation between CPU, graphic and UPS behavior.

PCBE Agent file version is 9.2.0.4 on all computers.

USBDeview sees the UPS even when PCBE Agent doesn't. I'm attaching full report of USBDeview on a PC whose agent doesn't see the UPS and on a PC whose agent does.

UPS firmware is 03.5, ID:1015. I couldn't find any info and/or update of SMT1500IC firmware online. The system is not and will not be connected to the Internet.

Thanks for your help and best regards.