Minilab 3 is stuck, unable to use it (more info in the thread) - Help is really appreciated please!

Hello everyone. i made a forum account for this issue i’m having because i find it really upsetting that this is happening to my Minilab3 which has never happened before and i already looked through countless forum threads from here and google. (i already contacted support but they told me they will take like within 48 hours to respond and i want to fix this issue as soon as possible because i will be leaving for vacation this week)

What’s the issue?:

I decided to use my minilab 3 after a while of not using it so i connected it through my Mac Mini M1 and it booted up like normal but i had a firmware upgrade pending so i decided to upgrade it to the latest but it wouldn’t do anything until eventually it did with another cable i had around and had used for the minilab 3 before and after that it just worked like normal and i was able to use it on my DAW.

Then i decided to switch to another cable which was a bit longer than the one i was using so i did that and plugged it in but my minilab 3 went into this mode (which i assume its the firmware mode?) where it was the blue lights rotating around the Shift, Hold, Oct - and Oct + buttons and in MCC it tells me that it failed to open the device but it gave me the option of upgrading the firmware to 1.2.0 which i already did?? and the firmware revision that it tells me is 0.1.0 which is off and then i did the upgrade firmware thing again and it tells me it succeeded but it didn’t do anything and i still get the failed to open the device error and upgrading the firmware went pretty fast for this time which is odd because now its taking a lot longer, it goes to 19% quickly and then it takes very long to go up one percent so the behavior changed for some reason, before this i tried to do it manually but that also didn’t work, right now im leaving it upgrade again but before this it closed itself so i had to redo it, its currently at 22%.

I hope this is enough information for you guys to be able to help me on this issue, it would suck if i had to return it or buy a new one, best case is return it and get a new one but i don’t know if my warranty is able to cover that since it been a while since i brought the Minilab 3.

Thank you so much if you manage to help me on this!

Hello there.

If the FW update starts but slow down and fail while running, to me it looks like a hardware issue, where the flash of your device may have been damaged.

You did right trying another cable, I would even suggest to try another computer to be sure, but that would only confirm that this is indeed a HW issue and that you need check if you warranty is still active.

Cheers !

Hey thank you, i have tried it on another computer but i was met with the same issue but fortunately, today support got back to me and told me to do a factory reset and it worked! now the firmware revision that MCC tells me is the latest (1.2.0).

For those who have this problem, follow this:

Please reset the MiniLab 3 to its original factory settings:

WARNING: This procedure will erase all presets and device settings and restore them to the default values. So first, use the MIDI Control Center software to back up your changes.

• Unplug the USB cable from the back of the keyboard
• Hold down the Oct - and Oct + buttons
• Plug the USB cable back in, then release the buttons

“Factory reset” will be displayed on the MiniLab’s screen.

1 Like