Troubleshooting by symptom

Device not found

The status says “Device … not found” and itself lists the likely causes. Check in order:

  1. The USB cable and the controller’s power; after reconnecting, press Refresh in the driver setup dialog.
  2. The WinUSB driver: open Hardware Settings (F3) → Connection → Driver Setup. The DEVICE STATUS section shows one of three states — device not found, ready to use, or “WinUSB driver required”; in the latter case press Install WinUSB Driver.
  3. Remember: the EzCad driver and WinUSB are mutually exclusive. If EzCad ran on this machine recently, the board is held by its driver — install WinUSB from Zenom; to go back to EzCad, use Restore Original Driver.
  4. The driver dialog needs administrator rights — otherwise it offers to restart the program as administrator.

Connection details — Connecting the machine.

The connection dropped mid-work

Status “USB connection lost”: check the cable and power. No need to reconnect manually — the mark and red light commands connect on their own on the next run.

A mark won’t start

  • “Nothing to mark” — the job has no visible unlocked objects: check hidden and locked objects, the “Mark Selected” flag (is the selection empty?), and whether the objects’ pen is disabled — objects of a disabled pen are not marked.
  • “Exit simulation first” — the simulation is open: exit it (SIM or Esc) and try again.
  • The zero-power warning does not block marking — but such a pass burns nothing.
  • “Continuous unavailable: …” — the job cannot run as a continuous loop; the program names the reason and marks a single pass. The list of reasons — Running a mark.
  • “Rotary mark blocked” — the Rotary panel is open but the axis is not enabled in Hardware Settings (the Axis tab).

The red light won’t trace

  • “Nothing to trace” — no selected visible objects.
  • “Red light blocked: trace exceeds the field” — the trace leaves the workspace: shrink the layout or move it toward the center.

Built-in diagnostics

  • The Console (Ctrl+` or View → Console) — the laser layer’s event log: connection, marking, red light, IO. Info/Warn/Error levels, a category filter, Copy All. The first place to look when “the machine doesn’t respond”.
  • Diagnostic Report (Help → Generate Diagnostic Report…) — one button collects a ZIP archive for support: recent USB captures plus the log tail; the archive lands on the desktop, with the path shown immediately.
  • USB recording — enable the USB recording checkbox on the Connection tab: the ● REC button appears in the title bar. The first click starts recording the controller exchange to .pcapng, the second stops and offers to save the capture. The capture folder — Laser → Open Capture Folder.
  • Report USB Issue (Help) — packs a specific USB problem together with a capture into a bundle to send to the developer.
  • Log files: laser.log (the laser layer journal) and crash.log (unhandled failures) in %AppData%\Astrelli\Zenom.

If the problem persists

Generate a diagnostic report and write to support via the contact page — attach the archive and describe what you did.