Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Luca Bertagnolio on March 14, 2013 at 12:38am

It might be that the Windows OS running inside the VMware Fusion virtual machine does not have the Dexcom G4 driver properly installed. VMware shows the device as connected, but it might not be correctly recognized by Windows.

I am sure there must be a way to reinstall the driver only. Were you prompted to install the driver when you first connected the G4 to your Mac and then selected PC?

Customer support should be able to help you in this case, as this is not specifically linked to VMware Fusion.

I do not have the G4 yet, so I cannot share any direct experience at this time.

Let us know how things develop.

Ciao, Luca

Permalink Reply by wayne on April 4, 2013 at 10:38am

Yeah, this is something that, according our IT people, just won't work. Dexcom has nobody around in their tech support who has any interest in helping, let alone being able to. So it's either boot camp, which is really not worth it, or finding someone with a Windows machine who will let you borrow it for checking Studio. The latter is easier for me, but it's still quite remarkable that Dexcom has no interest in providing a platform-independent way to see the data, and even charge the G4! This 20th century mindset is hard to understand.

Permalink Reply by wayne on April 5, 2013 at 11:48am

Actually i'm going to reply to myself ;-)
We did some testing on the chargers, and i'm pleased to report that the standard iphone USB brick used to charge phones and ipods has essentially identical specs to that of the Dexcom "brick." So even though Dexcom says it's "not recommended," there's no problem using the Apple USB chargers. In fact just connecting the G4 to the USB port on a Mac will allow it to charge, albeit a bit more slowly.

Permalink Reply by Luca Bertagnolio on April 5, 2013 at 1:39pm

Wayne, I am more convinced that this issue has to do with VMware, not with Dexcom. If it works on the same hardware, but with the Mac running a Windows OS on bare metal with Bootcamp, then the snafu is with VMware and not with Dexcom!

I do not yet have a G4, and I hope to be able to put my hands on one soon. When I will be able to do so, I will immediately try to figure out what the story is with VMware and OS X, as I do intend to run Bootcamp only to download the data from the G4 receiver, quite frankly.

It might be simpler to deal with VMware if there is a bug fix that needs to be implemented, in my opinion.

Ciao, Luca

Permalink Reply by John H on April 5, 2013 at 3:47pm

From what I have read, it doesn't work with Parallels or Virtual box either. So I doubt you will get anywhere with VMware, but if you do, be sure and let us know.

Permalink Reply by ChrisG on March 14, 2013 at 6:33am

Lukes Mom - I just went through this EXACT thing a few days ago. Luca is right, but the problem is that the Dexcom G4 driver is a special one that also creates a virtual COM port on the computer that you install the Studio software on. I finally gave up and installed Studio on a native Windows PC and of course it came up fine. I thought I could get the VM version on the Mac to work after that because I found the driver on the Windows PC and copied to my Win7 VM on the Mac. The problem was that even though the G4 still showed up as 'unknown device', when I tried to update the driver with the Dex driver (which I am pretty sure I got right based on the file date which matched my install date of Studio), the Win7 VM did not accept the driver as a valid driver for that device type.

I ran out of time and ideas after that, but at some point will revisit this.

The short answer to your question is, unfortunately, you must use a native Windows PC for Studio to install properly.

I guess this may also work now that I think of it - on a native Windows PC, install the Dex Studio, get the G4 to connect, then use VMware tools to migrate it over to the Mac. If this annoys me enough I will try that, it is just a bit more of a time consuming project.

Sorry for the bad news, interested to see how others have fared. I was on the Main Room here and everyone had used native Windows....

-ChrisG

Permalink Reply by Benjamin McLaughlin on March 14, 2013 at 7:15am

One way that you can get it to work is by installing windows via boot camp on the a the MAC. I know a lot of people don't want to do this because it requires you to partition your hard drive, but it works exceptionally well. I don't want to get into the particulars, but basically you divide your hard drive into "two" separate hard drives (you can allocate space however you want, so if you are going to use windows ONLY for dexcom, just give it about 30 gigs. Then you will have the MAC os running on one partition, and you install Windows to run on the other. Just Google boot camp for MAC and you will get all the details. One thing to note this way, you either will be running Windows or MAC, unlike vmware where you run windows inside of MAC. I am sure this is why it works better though, because in Windows mode the use ports are seen as Windows usb ports and not MAC usb.

If you go this route there are many other geeky questions that you may want to ask. Just ask and I bet we could find out.

Permalink Reply by Benjamin McLaughlin on March 14, 2013 at 11:42am

After reading my post, I know it sounds very technical. Boot camp is an application already on your mac, just type it in spot light and it will come up. Its a step by step procedure that anyone can do. Google "survive boot camp mac" and there is a very good article that walks you through it. You do not need to know anything to begin with. You just need a valid copy of windows. I bought windows 7 for $85 on eBay.

Permalink Reply by Chas on March 22, 2013 at 1:11am

I too have a Mac and VMware, with same issue. Its the VMWare SW messing around with the USB ports when your in Windows and the G4 cannot be connected or recognised - although I'm told that the older 7 does work ?.

I download on a PC and transfer the records.

Although as already stated I'd heard from others if you discard VMware and use Bootcamp then others report it all works fine as the Mac is then running as a PC and not trying to simulate a PC. This is fine if you don't want your Mac to easily switch between IOS and Win as it can only run in one or the other at one time.

Permalink Reply by edelbitter on April 29, 2013 at 1:35pm

I was not able to get Dexcom Studio to work with VmWare Fusion, either. Windows (both XP and Windows 7) said that it could not recognize the device driver. (My VMware version is 3.x)
However I did have success using software similar to VMware Fusion, called Parallels.
The receiver shows as attached, and I can upload data to a MacBook Pro. Worked with both a 2007 era and a 2012 - era MacBook Pro, which means the USB connection must be working with both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, as it should. Used Windows 7, Parallels 8.

HTH,

Jim