Free USB Analyzer

This release is dedicated mostly to polishing various application features. It improves a lot of existing components by fixing bugs and memory leaks. It also significantly reduces application memory requirements and works around memory exhaustion issues, particularly on 32-bit systems.

New Features

This release introduces high-precision session time measurement mode. As of 7.51, this mode is supported by USB, Serial and Network modules. When enabled (per-session), Device Monitoring Studio uses high-precision system timer for packet time-stamping. This mode is enabled by default if Device Monitoring Studio is installed on Windows 7 or later.

Starting from 7.51, various device information is automatically saved to a log file if the Data Recording module is added to a monitoring session. This includes the Serial Device Information for serial devices and all kinds of USB descriptors for USB devices (Device Descriptor, Configuration Descriptor and HID Descriptor tool windows).

When resulting log file is later selected in the Devices tool window, corresponding tool windows are updated with saved information.

Fixed Bugs

This release fixes over 200 different bugs, including crashes. A special attention has been paid to the following:

1. Monitoring session startup and shutdown-related issues, including crashes and hangs. This includes configuring and starting monitoring session, adding or removing data processing modules to running session and stopping monitoring session, as well as changing session's Capture Filter or visualizers' Display Filter for a running session.
2. Protocol binding performance.
3. Issues with various data visualizers. Almost every data visualizer has been optimized or fixed in some way.
4. Workspace saving and loading issues.

Here is a short list of most remarkable fixed bugs:

Correct emergency session termination

When resources are low, Device Monitoring Studio is now more robust in stopping affected high-data rate monitoring sessions, or session processing modules. This mostly affects 32-bit systems or systems with slow secondary storage.

Log file repairing

Device Monitoring Studio has always repaired damaged log files on startup. If log file was large, it introduced a startup delay (only splash screen was visible and application appeared to be hanging). Now a progress bar is shown to tell the user that application is alive.

Reading USB device descriptors

It was impossible to read USB device descriptors on some systems. The problem seems to be related to incorrect system configuration, damaged host controller driver installation or various security issues. Device Monitoring Studio now has an alternative way to read descriptors if previous method fails. This improves monitoring experience for USB devices on affected systems.

Operating with limited processing resources

During monitoring Device Monitoring Studio uses available disk space as configured in the Data Processing Tab (invoked by Tools » Settings menu command). We have fixed a number of bugs related to Device Monitoring Studio operation under limited settings (like 1% on a single disk and 0% on all others).

Memory Usage Optimizations

This release also brings improvements to Device Monitoring Studio memory usage strategies. All critical paths have been carefully analyzed and profiled, resulting in memory usage savings of up to 10 times in several places. Application is now much more robust on systems with lower amount of RAM. In addition, when installed on 32-bit operating systems, application is now capable of sustaining much higher data rates during monitoring.

Reduced memory demands now also allow to start "heavier" monitoring sessions - sessions with more data processing modules, complex custom protocols and filter expressions.

Supported OSes

This release drops support for 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. 32-bit versions of these operating systems are still supported.

Remote Source now requires at least Windows Vista and will not be installed on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Future releases will drop support for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 entirely.

UI Layout Update

This release will install new default UI layout (tool windows and toolbars). Any user-defined layout will be overwritten.