USB driver workaround
The SPORTident USB Windows driver does not work on all Windows systems anymore. The driver is required to use the BSM7/8 and SRR USB Dongle products. BS11 stations do not need the driver.
As of May 2026, we have been working with Microsoft for a few months to resolve the issue, without significant progress.
If you get an error message that the driver is being blocked when connecting a SPORTident device to your computer or if the device is not recognised at all, we recommend trying the following workaround.
Specifically, the workaround can help in the following situations:
- Windows 11 systems with the April 2026 update can block access to the SPORTident USB driver. This potentially affects all up-to-date Windows computers. See below for background information.
- PCs with an ARM64 CPU such as Snapdragon processors used in some Windows Surface laptops
For support write to support@sportident.com.
Workaround
Uninstall the SPORTident USB driver
Go to “Add or remove programs”, find “Windows Driver Package - SPORTident (sliabenm) Ports”, uninstall.
Download the Silicon Labs driver
‘CP210x USB to UART Bridge’ drivers for Windows and Mac OSX are available from Silicon Labs via the following website:
https://www.silabs.com/developers/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers?tab=downloads
For Windows 10/11 on ARM, please download the ‘CP210x Universal Windows Driver’.
Direct download link:
https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/software/CP210x_Universal_Windows_Driver.zip
Install the driver for a connected SPORTident device
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Download the ‘CP210x Universal Windows Driver’ from Silicon Labs as described above. Extract the files to a local folder.
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Connect your SPORTident BSM7/8-USB device to your PC.
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Open the Device Manager by clicking on the Windows icon and selecting ‘Device Manager’.
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The BSM7/8 ‘SPORTident USB to UART Bridge Controller’ will show up as an unknown device.
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Right click on ‘SPORTident USB to UART bridge’ and select ‘Update driver’.
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Select ‘Browse my computer for drivers’.
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Select ‘Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer’.
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Select ‘Show All Devices’ and click ‘Next’.
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Click ‘Have Disk …’.
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Click ‘Browse …’.
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Navigate to the folder where you extracted the ‘CP210x Universal Windows Driver’ in step 1, select ‘silabser.inf’, and click ‘Open’.
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Click ‘OK’.
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Select ‘Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge’ and click ‘Next’.
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Confirm the warning with ‘Yes’.
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Windows will confirm the successful installation of the driver.
You will need to repeat steps 3 to 15 for every new SPORTident BSM7/8-USB device you connect to your PC.
Why the SPORTident USB Windows driver is getting blocked
Starting with the April security update (KB5083769) for Windows 11, released April 14, 2026, the SPORTident USB Windows driver no longer “works” − it gets blocked.
As a user you get an error message that looks like this:
The change was announced in a Microsoft blog post. The best resource on the topic is Microsoft’s article on the Windows Driver Policy.
According to Microsoft, systems with the April security update will be in an evaluation phase of 100 hours uptime and 3 reboots. After the evaluation phase Windows goes to enforcement mode and drivers not signed by Microsoft (like the SPORTident driver) will be blocked. Each time the driver is used in evaluation phase the evaluation phase gets reset and starts from the beginning. However, our testing across a range of Windows computers suggests that the mechanism does not work quite the way as announced by Microsoft. We do not know how and when exactly a Windows system goes to enforement mode.
Importantly, in practice this means that there is no real way of knowing when exactly any given computer will have the SPORTident driver blocked. As far as we know, it can happen any date and time.
There is no reasonable way to disable this “security” feature − short of disabling secure boot and deleting the policies by hand, which does not sound practical for non-expert users.