mkIII Koshima Startup issue and firmware questions

[BloodSix]

Hey VKB'rs

I've been running the Koshima sticks with the mkIII base for about 6 months now. Always had an issue on startup with the inconsistent initialization or recognition. Sometimes they work fine on startup, sometimes one or both aren't lit up or seen in my devices. I've disabled all of my startup programs per prior suggestions. I have to unplug them multiple times and restart my rig to find them. Sometimes they will be recognized after I let my rig sit for 10 - 30 minutes.

I play Star Citizen and a few other games, but if I start SC when one or both sticks aren't running I have to delete my keybinds to even start the game and spend half an hour resetting them. Just figured out the stick startup issues is causing this.

Questions,

1. I want to do a firmware update, what file do I use for my setup? Just downloaded the v2_00_7.zip

2. If it's not firmware do you have any suggestions as to why my rig wouldn't recognize my sticks all the time on startup?

*Edit* I attempted to flash my stick with _BlackBox_GF_KG_v2_00_7.vkb using DKBDevCfg-C and the Z-Bootloader tool. When I initialize Z-Bootloader the stick powers off. I choose the file and hit Flash It! but nothing happens. Shows "35.962 Device disconnected". If I unplug/plug-in stick it powers up again and still nothing happens. If I hit Reset I get "Error write data: 41893968". Lastly when I try to close the Z-Bootloader I get "Unable to write to zconfig.ini" and I have to kill it in taskmanager to exit the program.

Thank you.

[fallout9]

Hi BloodSix. Try to plug your joysticks directly into the computer or at least connect them through a powered USB. If you connect them to computer directly try to swap the USB ports until you get a stable connection. You don't have to restart your computer after plugging the joysticks.
Star Citizen requires the joysticks to be plugged in when you start the game; if you plug the joysticks after you started the game it won't recognize them, but you could restart the game and the game would read the joysticks again. If you are changing USB ports for your joysticks sometimes the game will mix them up; in order to change joystick's order in game you could use the command pp_resortdevices joystick 1 2, where 1 and 2 are the positions of your joysticks. More about bindings in SC here.
To flash your joysticks to the latest firmware please follow this guide. Before doing that please delete all the previous VKB files from your hard drive and start a clean installation, following the guide exactly, not skipping any steps. It would help to do the flashing process with only 1 joystick plugged at the time. It would also help to kill background running software like Aorus, Razer, Logitech, vJoy etc. And start the VKBDevCfg as Admin.
Good luck.