I have to work on a Windows 10 laptop, and the best choice for taking on the road would be my old beloved Mbox2…you know the question - can anybody get hold of the driver to run it? Some generic driver, any non-crashing driver, anything workable?
Have you tried asio4all? WASAPI?
You could also see if the Win7 or 8 ASIO driver works: https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/Mbox-2-Drivers
For what it’s worth, I’ve successfully used an M-Audio Audiophile 192 Win7 driver in Win10 with zero issues.
Thanks for the swift response!
Care to say the exact Windows 10 version you are using? I was trying some Win 7 drivers out with newer Windows 10, and that left me with crashes so heavy, that I had to reinstall the whole system.
I keep an up-to-date Win10 partition around but don’t use it much. I think I’m either on 1909 or 2004. I definitely haven’t installed the Oct 2020 update as I set my machine to wait 365 days for major upgrades and 30 days for other updates: https://confluence.merging.com/display/PUBLICDOC/Windows+10+Configuration#Windows10Configuration-WINDOWSUPDATE
A few months ago I also installed the M-Audio Delta Win7/8 driver on a Win10 (1909 or 2004) desktop machine, as it’s the latest available driver package. I remember a bit of hassle to identify the official package among those lots of “fake” driver site offers, and make it install, but google found me some HowTo and in the end I got it right.
Shoot! I use a MBox2! I’ll have to look around because I went through gymnastics to get it running as well. The issue I ran into was I had the old firmware on the device, and I needed to run the firmware updates to get it to recognize on any modern systems. Once I got a hold of the installers i needed, they wouldn’t run properly in any modern OS, even using compatibility mode settings. I remember I had to make a Windows XP virtual machine to run the updater. But after that it worked like aces on every OS. Pulled drivers automatically when plugged in, etc. I’ll dig around and see if kept the firmware updater saved anywhere!
I believe this was the download i used:
[http://secure.digidesign.com/services/avid/kb/downloads.cfm?digiArticleId=24364](https://MBox2 Firmware updater v1.43)
Perhaps if you have a Mac around you could get it to update easier than I did. But yeah, I just used VirtualBox and an old XP installer ISO to get a basic virtual machine running on my computer for long enough to update the MBox. You have to adjust the settings on virtualbox too, to tell the Mbox USB cable to be persistently dedicated to that Virtual Machine, that way during the update, if the Mbox has to refresh its connection, or ‘restart’, the Virtual Box doesn’t lose track of the MBox. Hopefully this helps more than it confuses. And hopefully you’ve used virtual machines at least a little to know what I’m talking about 
Please do so, and post when you find. Seems like hardware is being treated same as software these days. I fear there might be a way found soon to obsolete the Neumanns.
Looks like replied via email so you may not have seen my second message. I already posted a bunch of info for you here. Open the forum and you’ll see it.
Hi! I finally managed to try do what you suggested. After I managed to find the DLL, it detected that the Mbox was not plugged in. I also selected Mbox 2 as a Virtualbox dedicated USB device. If you have encountered this error, what was the fix for it? Thanks!
Oh this sounds really familiar! I think i may have had to do something odd to get around it. I want to say it’s something like the updater restarts the Mbox, and by restarting it, VirtualBox loses connection with it for a moment, and then the Mbox updater fails to continue the update process.
I want to say I did something odd like the SECOND the Mbox restarts I used the VirtualBox pause command to pause it, and then hopped in the VM’s settings and reminded the VM that the Mbox was connected. Since the M2 takes a while to turn on, and sort of “boot up” i think i did something along those lines to give it time to be restart fully before continuing in the process. Jeeze, this is me remember 2 years back now and I wish I remembered more clearly what I had to do for you. I remember the error you’re mentioning, and getting very frustrated that it was losing connection during the updater. There is definitely a way to get it to run though (because I’m still currently using the M2 as my audio interface).
Thanks, I’ll try some gentle hands-on persuasion ;). If it is about updating MBox’s firmware, maybe it might be easier to do on a Mac?
OK, I finally got some time to sit down and try everything out.
I eventually managed to update MBox2 firmware to 1.43. How? Via an old PPC Mac.
After that, little success. I installed latest MBox2 drivers (from 2011) on the laptop successfully, the desktop, however, got knocked down into blue screen after every restart. With the laptop, MBox2 works fine as a playback device, but I got zero results with recording. ASIO4ALL, MME, Delta M-Audio Audiophile - all failed. No input whatsoever.
Tested with Reaper, Ardour and Audacity.
Nice getting it updated! And drat that you’ve hit more walls! I’m a Linux user and it works solid for me there (Ubuntu Studio). I tested it once on a Windows 10 as well and it didn’t give me issues.
Could it be an issue with the Mbox itself? Or perhaps not enough power? Are you using it on USB ports that are offering enough voltage? Like a USB 2.0, or 3.0? Also worth swapping out the serial cable in case your cable is bad or faulty?
I think I’ll buy some other interface for this Windows 10 laptop situation, from some company that releases products that work well with generic drivers. In my humble opinion, MBox is hardware, pretty much like a microphone, and should be usable as long as not broken. It would have been fair if AVID at least released some updated drivers for a fee.
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