Arduino IDE 2.3.9 Debugging [sharing]

[dustaar8]

Just to share what I have done to get the debugging start working.

Setup

• Windows 11
• Adruino IDE Version 2.3.9
• M5Stack StickS3

Symptom

• when clicking the Start Debugging button, encounter error messages as follows:

Waiting for gdb server to start...[2026-06-07T13:03:42.505Z] SERVER CONSOLE DEBUG: onBackendConnect: gdb-server session connected. You can switch to "DEBUG CONSOLE" to see GDB interactions.
"C:\\Users\\dandu\\AppData\\Local\\Arduino15\\packages\\m5stack\\tools\\openocd-esp32\\v0.12.0-esp32-20251215/bin/openocd" -c "gdb_port 50000" -c "tcl_port 50001" -c "telnet_port 50002" -s "c:\\Users\\dandu\\Documents\\M5Stack\\StickS3\\Pong" -f "C:/Program Files/Arduino IDE/resources/app/plugins/cortex-debug/extension/support/openocd-helpers.tcl" -f board/esp32s3-builtin.cfg
Open On-Chip Debugger v0.12.0-esp32-20251215 (2025-12-15-18:17)
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
        http://openocd.org/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
DEPRECATED! use 'gdb port', not 'gdb_port'
DEPRECATED! use 'tcl port' not 'tcl_port'
DEPRECATED! use 'telnet port', not 'telnet_port'
CDRTOSConfigure
Info : esp_usb_jtag: VID set to 0x303a and PID to 0x1001
Info : esp_usb_jtag: capabilities descriptor set to 0x2000
Info : Listening on port 50001 for tcl connections
Info : Listening on port 50002 for telnet connections
Error: libusb_open() failed with LIBUSB_ERROR_NOT_FOUND
Error: esp_usb_jtag: could not find or open device!

Diagnosis

• It is the driver for USB JTAG/serial debug unit (Interface 2) that causes issue.

Reasons

• Using Zadig, found that the current driver is WINUSB (v10.0.26100.1150)
• The v10.0.x WinUSB driver is Microsoft's newer inbox driver that Windows sometimes auto-installs. It has been observed to be incompatible with OpenOCD's libusb on ESP32-S3 JTAG, causing exactly the LIBUSB_ERROR_NOT_FOUND error you saw. Visual Micro's own documentation explicitly warns about this: visualmicro

Fix

• install Zadig
• replace/downgrade driver for USB JTAG/serial debug unit (Interface 2) to WinUSB (v6.1.7600.16385). NOTE: select "Install Driver" by clicking the dropbox on the button. The default option in the dropbox should be "Install WCID Driver" which will not help, it will still be the incompatible v10.0.x driver after Zadig installed the driver.

Note

• on the USB JTAG/serial debug unit (Interface 0), the driver usbser (v10.0.26100.8328) is fine. There are Internet post that suggest replacing it with USB Serial (CDC). No need to make "Start Debugging" working.

References

• IDE 2.3.0 debugging esp32s3 using built-in usb jtag
• Leveraging ESP32 Built-in JTAG for Advanced Debugging: A Step-by-Step Guide