It's all about the Software

rtlsdr dongles have two bulk in interfaces. Alas on windows only one can be used at a time. They are the usual TV tuner and its IR controls, respectively. You want the first one, bulk in interface 0. I have a Terratec dongle (0CCD 00D7) with the "Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0)" and "Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 1)" designations for the tuner and IR respectively. It only shows up once in RTLTool and the good thing is that it works fine. So I am trying to guess why RTLTool might object. It appears the dongle has the right ID information. I presume you have had it turned off at least once before you tried to read the dongle if you renamed it.

Note that you cannot run RTLTool while something like SDRSharp may have the dongle opened. The lack of strings down in the dongle renaming area suggests it could not read the information from the dongle or it could not open the dongle.

Pull the dongle, reinsert it, and check again with device manager and to make sure it comes up as 0bda 2838. Then with nothing else running try the RTLTool.

I wonder if some security tool is blocking access to the dongle.

I reopened the RTLTool project and made one change that "might" help diagnose the problem. But, really, the only problem that should prevent it from opening fully is an inability to open the dongle at all.

{^_^}

There is a new version of RtlTool posted. It provides the user more information and hopefully makes it safer for situations where merely renaming a dongle that already has scrambled data could render it useless.

{^_^}

JD, the 64b version from your updated tool doesn't find my RTL-SDR.COM (v3) dongle.
The 32b version is ok and the 32b+64b from the older version are ok too.

The 64 bit version requires 64 bit libraries, rtlsdr.dll and libusb....dll. It tries to load a 32 bit dll and fails.

However, as if a half hour ago I have a fully standalone version that is static linked. If it finds an rtlsdr.dll in its directory it will use that as a handy test tool for the dll. But if you have the file all by itself in a folder and run it then it uses its built in stuff. (It uses its static linked libusb regardless.)

{^_^}

By the way - do you want to try the single file version? I can send it to you or post it here. It's all of 131 kB for x64. If there is no rtlsdr.dll in its folder it uses its internal copy. Otherwise it tries to use the one in the folder. The title bar tells you what it is running. The all in one allows a critical VID/PID pair that allows easy recovery from a messed up dongle. Whatever it is that messes them up seems to set then as 0xffff 0xffff. So I allowed that as an rtlsdr dongle.

{^_^}

Yes, ok, pls send a private message

You have a message here with the link.
{^_^}