Having a hard time getting your controller to connect using Windows? Follow the troubleshooting steps below to get up and running.
Restart your computer
A classic troubleshooting step, but you would be surprised at the amount of people that bypass this one! Restarting your computer refreshes a lot of driver issues and refreshes the OS. It's good to restart after any kind of driver or software installation to make sure everything is working correctly.
Check you have the correct drivers installed
A lot of controllers need drivers to be installed before it will connect with a Windows computer.
Please make sure you have the correct driver installed from your hardware manufacturers website here
Visit your hardware manufacturers website for information, and if you need to install a driver make sure you restart your computer to ensure all updates are refreshed.
Use another USB port and cable
Try connecting your controller using a different USB port and using a different USB cable. Not all USB cables are created equal and some provide higher connection quality. You might have a faulty one.
Check the Audio Playback devices
When you connect your hardware to your Windows computer, your operating system may secure your hardware as the default soundcard for playback and recording in Windows. If this happens, Serato software will not be able to access your hardware's soundcard and therefore will not connect.
If you are using a Windows computer with supported hardware and your hardware doesn't connect, you should:
• Close all applications
• Navigate to 'Control Panel' > 'Sound'
• Select your computer's internal soundcard or speakers as the default Playback device
• Select your computer's internal soundcard or microphone as the default Recording device
• Check the Communications tab to see if you need to set the internal soundcard as the default device. (this is not always necessary, as with some Windows versions there is no option to set a device in this tab)
• Open your Serato software and try to connect your hardware
Reinstalling USB device (controller) driver
Just to make sure your device drivers are being uninstalled and reinstalled correctly, follow this process:
• Click 'Start'
• Right Click 'Computer'
• Click 'Manage'
• Click on 'Device Manager'
• Click on 'Sound, Video & Game Controllers'
• Please make sure that your device appears here, right click on the device, and click 'Uninstall'
• If you see another version of your device affixed with 'MIDI' please also right click on this device, and click 'Uninstall'
• Unplug your device, and after 10 seconds, reconnect your device. Your computer should then attempt to reinstall the drivers, and once this has finished, the device will show up in 'Sound, Video & Game Controllers' again.
Please make sure you have the correct driver installed from your hardware manufacturers website here
Update USB drivers
Your computers' USB drivers might be out of date. Check your computer manufacturer's website and check you have the latest drivers installed.
Conflicting audio drivers
Do you use any other audio applications? Have you got any other Audio devices connected to your computer other than your Serato DJ controller? Having other audio devices connected (especially other soundcards/interfaces) can conflict with connected Serato DJ controllers and may result in no connection.
Unplug any other audio devices, uninstall or disable any other audio drivers in the Device Manager and remember.. restart your computer!
NOTE: On some 11th Gen Intel-based CPU Windows computers, some users are unable to connect their Serato primary hardware. To find out how out more, check-out our KNOWN ISSUE: Computers with Intel 11th gen Core i-series CPU's can result in a failed audio or MIDI connection with Serato primary hardware.