Siglent SDG2042X Firmware Update - Failed! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: Hrvoje_CRO
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2023, 04:33:33 pm
content: Hi!I just wanted to update my SDG2042X with newest FW, but in every possible case i got error Failed!Please help!Thank you!Hrvoje

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2023, 08:32:44 pm
content: Quote from: Hrvoje_CRO on May 23, 2023, 04:33:33 pmUsing what process ?It should be by USB stick of which there are mandatory requirements, it must be in FAT32 format and best with 4k clusters and stick size should be 8GB or smaller.Further, if currently using an old firmware version there are dependencies of a version you must update to first before installing the latest.See attached update instructions and scroll down to the compatability table.

author: Hrvoje_CRO
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2023, 03:12:11 pm
content: Hi tautech,"It should be by USB stick of which there are mandatory requirements, it must be in FAT32 format and best with 4k clusters and stick size should be 8GB or smaller."Yes, i know that and i am using 1GB stick.The problem is in that i stucked on FW update version 2.01.01.35RB2. After that i cannot update it to newer versions.Thank you in advance!

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2023, 08:54:02 pm
content: Quote from: Hrvoje_CRO on May 24, 2023, 03:12:11 pmWe have done 100's of updates over the years without issue so I highly suspect your USB stick is the problem.Replace it with a new 8GB one.

author: MathWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2023, 10:34:58 pm
content: I also have about a 3yo SDG2042X, and somehow "I hacked it" to the 2142X. I better upgrade this and my DMM also. I did upgrade my scope, it was pretty easy.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2023, 11:45:40 pm
content: Quote from: MathWizard on May 24, 2023, 10:34:58 pmDMM should be considered urgent so to eliminate those pesky boot freezes.All firmware upgrades need be and are easy excepting for 1 Siglent product range, their linear PSU's for which it must be done through the EasyPower SW utility. Easy enough but a darn nuisance in our case needing to drag them to a PC or LAN access point.

author: konsolenritter
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 21, 2025, 12:38:48 pm
content: @Hrvoje_CROIf still of interest, i found the solution. I had exactly the same behaviour for my early model of 2042X (not hacked). I never came further than SDG2000X_2.01.01.35R3B2 in my case.What wonders if nobody stumbled about the FW file size. It stepped up from nearby 14 MiB up to 38 MiB or even more, exactly after 35R3B2.Following the hints here i reformatted my old and still working cruzer-micro with 4gb to a freshly formatted fat32 with 4k clusters. No change. All updates fail at the same point: It comes up to 20%, then lasts, then proceeds fastly to 80% or more, saying "fail..." within fractions of a second.Then i saw, that the internal (c: drive) of early models like mine only has ~85 MiB avail, if at all. And here lies the solution. Yeeeeeaaaars ago i loaded customized arb waveforms by my own Labview VI to the device, so the free space on c: dropped down to something like 15 MiB or so. I deleted then three of my fullsize custom waveforms of 16 MiB each and got enough freespace on c: to survive the next update trial, going now directly to P38R4, which seems to be the newest one.Sidenote: After deleting waveforms to get more free space, you have to reboot the machine just before the next trial of fw update...ergo: the issue is that the fw uploader in the device never tells the user about running out of freespace of the internal flash. It silently tries to copy the ADS'ses content to the internal flash and performing the solely update run after the next reboot.Hope that helps.

author: Timpert
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2025, 07:13:50 am
content: I can confirm the above, you need enough free space on the internal storage. However, I also had the USB drive issue where I had the firmware .zip on a network drive, and I unzipped the .ads file straight to the USB drive. Apparently that corrupted the file although the function generator appeared to find the file just fine, and the file size appeared OK too. So only when I first copied the zip to a local drive, unzipped it and then copied the .ads file to the USB drive AND freed up enough space by deleting my arbitrary waveforms from the generator I could upgrade the firmware to version V2.01.01.38R4. So in case you can't upgrade, check both possibilities.Tip: if you have a lot of arb waves stored on your device then deletion gets tedious. You can consider issuing the following SCPI command to the device via your favorite means (NI-MAX, Telnet to port 5024, pyvisa or whatever): 'DEL_STORE_FILE *.bin'. That will delete all stored .bin files on internal storage in one go. Modify the extension if you have other file types on the device. Although the Siglent pagehttps://siglentna.com/operating-tip/delete-arbitrary-files-sdg/says it is for the SDG6000X, it works for the SDG2000X too.