Unable to set up Intel Edison on Windows I am new to hobby electronics and have hit a dead end with my Intel Edison (which hopefully will not join the pile of useless components I have wasted my money on), and would appreciate some help with the setup procedure. The main problem is that I cannot connect to my Edison via the middle (lets call it "A") micro-USB port in order to get it into a working condition. 

My objective is to connect to it's build-in Linux via SSH with the USB cables connected after installing the latest flash image.

I am using an Edison with an Arduino breakout board.

Here is the sequence of steps I followed:


I connected a 12V 2.6A AC to DC adapter to power the board. (Via the barrel connector). The green light came on to indicate it is powered.
I connected the "A" micro-USB port (i.e. not the one on the edge) to my computer.


At this point I could access the drive through Windows Explorer, however this changed when I executed the next step:


I installed the software from step 2 at https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/library/edison-getting-started.
Something went wrong during the subsequent installation process. I don't know what.


At this point I could no longer access the drive. It would only appear as an "Unknown device" in Windows Device Manager. In order to try and fix this I gave up on the option where it is mounted as a Windows Drive.


I connected to the micro-USB port at the edge of the Arduino board and disconnected A.
I went to Windows Device Manager and found the connected device on COM6
I installed Putty and connected to COM6 with a baud of 115200.
The console showed a blank screen with a green cursor in the top left.
I waited 30 seconds for it to boot.
I hit Cntrl+C because I still saw the same screen from step 9.


I then saw this on the console:



Unknown boot mode: boot
Saving Environment to MMC...
Writing to MMC(0)... done
Resetting to default boot mode and reboot...
resetting ...


******************************
PSH KERNEL VERSION: b0182b2b
                WR: 20104000
******************************

SCU IPC: 0x800000d0  0xfffce92c

PSH miaHOB version: TNG.B0.VVBD.0000000c

microkernel built 11:24:08 Feb  5 2015

******* PSH loader *******
PCM page cache size = 192 KB
Cache Constraint = 0 Pages
Arming IPC driver ..
Adding page store pool ..
PagestoreAddr(IMR Start Address) = 0x04899000
pageStoreSize(IMR Size)          = 0x00080000

*** Ready to receive application ***


U-Boot 2014.04 (Jun 19 2015 - 12:05:55)

       Watchdog enabled
DRAM:  980.6 MiB
MMC:   tangier_sdhci: 0
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
Target:ifwi
Partitioning already done...
Partitioning already done...
Saving Environment to MMC...
Writing to redundant MMC(0)... done
GADGET DRIVER: usb_dnl_dfu



I have no idea what to do next.
I fixed it by following these steps (through trial and error, I don't really understand what I did but it works ...)

I am using Windows 8.1, 64 bit edition.


Download the Edison firmware from https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/hardware/edison/downloads. For me it was http://downloadmirror.intel.com/25028/eng/edison-image-ww25.5-15.zip.
Extract the zip file.
Start the Windows Command Prompt as Administrator.
The extracted archive should contain a file called "flashall.bat". Change to the directory containing the file.
Connect all micro-USB ports and the barrel connector. At this point Windows did not recognize the Edison as a flash disk. This is part of what I was fixing.
Follow the steps in my question until the output on the console (also from my question) appears.
Run "flashall --recovery"
Run "flashall". When "Please plug and reboot the board" appears, disconnect the A (or middle) USB port and the barrel connector for the power. At this point everything is switched off. Then reconnect A and the barrel connector to reboot the board.
Wait about 5 minutes for the rest of the process to run automatically.


At this point everything should work again.

You should see this on the command line in Windows:


C:\Users\_\Desktop\edison-image-ww25.5-15>flashall --recovery
Starting Recovery mode
Please plug and reboot the board
Flashing IFWI
!!! You should install xfstk tools, please visit http://xfstk.sourceforge.net/

C:\Users\_\Desktop\edison-image-ww25.5-15>flashall
Using U-boot target: edison-blankrndis
Now waiting for dfu device 8087:0a99
Please plug and reboot the board
Dfu device found
Flashing IFWI
Download        [=========================] 100%      4194304 bytes
Download done.
Download        [=========================] 100%      4194304 bytes
Download done.
Flashing U-Boot
Download        [=========================] 100%       237568 bytes
Download done.
Flashing U-Boot Environment
Download        [=========================] 100%        65536 bytes
Download done.
Flashing U-Boot Environment Backup
Download        [=========================] 100%        65536 bytes
Download done.
Rebooting to apply partiton changes
Dfu device found
Flashing boot partition (kernel)
Download        [=========================] 100%      6111232 bytes
Download done.
Flashing rootfs, (it can take up to 5 minutes... Please be patient)
Download        [=========================] 100%    566330368 bytes
Download done.
Rebooting
U-boot & Kernel System Flash Success...
Your board needs to reboot to complete the flashing procedure, please do not unplug it for 2 minutes.

C:\Users\_\Desktop\edison-image-ww25.5-15>