So. I paid nearly £70 for a ROCCAT Kone[+] mouse and it arrived with the base firmware (v1.19) installed.
That’s not too surprising and as the mouse drivers also come with the firmware I thought the best thing to do was to grab the latest drivers (driver v1.48, firmware v1.43) from the website (http://www.roccat.org/Support/Gaming-Mice/ROCCAT-Kone-/) and install them.
Windows 7 prompted me to allow the ROCCAT firmware updater to have special access to my machine, which I allowed. I was asked to click “OK” to update the mouse with the latest firmware. I clicked “OK” and after only a short period was presented with an error message saying that the firmware update failed.
After a lot of trial and error I solved the problem by downloading the next version on from the version installed in my mouse. I already had firmware v1.19 so I downloaded firmware v1.20 (http://www.roccat.org/file_driver_356_88dd28c1ae41233d1c8f416c16f15195) and installed the mouse driver then ran the firmware updater again. This time it installed the firmware without problem.
I then downloaded firmware version v1.30 (http://www.roccat.org/file_driver_395_88dd28c1ae41233d1c8f416c16f15195) and tried updating to that version. Again it worked fine!
Lastly I downloaded and installed driver v1.48 that comes with firmware v1.43 (http://www.roccat.org/file_driver_480_88dd28c1ae41233d1c8f416c16f15195) and this time the installation of the firmware was successful! It’s a really painful way to update the firmware but I got there in the end.
With firmware v1.19 and driver v 1.48 I also experienced problems with the ROCCAT Talk application not working and with the lights on the mouse not responding to changes made in the control panel. I’ve put this down to a mismatch of drivers and firmware that has since been resolved by upgrading to the latest of both using the method described above.
UPDATE:
I’ve since been told by the chap that runs pcGameware (Hi James!) that the Driver v1.44/Firmware v1.39 package installs the firmware perfectly on top of firmware v1.19 so that could be a quick way to fixing your problems. Link here: pcGameware Review of Roccat Kone[+]