The most common cause of "Please ensure your computer is connected" is a network or firewall issue.

Please work with your IT department to try and use an alternative network or mobile hotspot to see if the issue persists.

Refer to the MinION IT Requirements for information on Inbound and Outbound traffic and a list of domains to whitelist.

To set up MinKNOW using a proxy please look at the following FAQ.

Once your proxy is set up and you have whitelisted all the necessary IP addresses, if you are still seeing this message, please follow the below instructions (Windows):

1. Click the Windows start button and type "Internet Options" - run the internet options app from the search results above
2. Click the "Connections" tab above, then the "Lan Settings" button found at the bottom of the dialogue box
3. Tick the "Bypass proxy server for local addresses" check box
4. Reboot the computer.
5. Unplug and replug the MinION into your USB port, and restart MinKNOW.

Are you still unable to begin sequencing?

If your computer is configured to a non-Romanic language, please attempt the following to see if the issue persists:

1. Set your computer hostname to contain only ASCII characters.
2. On Windows, go to Settings > Time & language > Language (or Language & region) > Administrative language settings > Change system locale, set to “English (United States)”.
3. When setting up a sequencing Experiment, ensure that all filenames and file locations related to the experiment contain only ASCII characters.