Pana 14-42ii on em10ii difficulty focusing in low light

a hit of meth wrote:

Ive had this lens for ages and never noticed this behavior on either system. On my e-m1, i never used it in the dark and I don't remember how it was with my epl6. No issues at all with amy pana bodies.

On my em10ii it fails to find anything 90% of the time, it just hunts and fails to find focus.

This is in low light, night markets, indoor restaurants, evening shots pointed at lit subjects. I don't thing I've noticed any lens have so much trouble in thr dark before.

Lenses don't have different behavior in low light vs bright light. Only bodies have that difference. If the lens focuses properly under any condition with any body (i.e. bright light on a Panny body) then there's nothing wrong with the lens.

The E-M10 series isn't known as the best focusing series, and Panny bodies are a lot better than Oly bodies in low light, in general, even compared to the E-M1 II.

The unusual thing is that i have not noticed my other lenses hunt so much or fail to find focus. The pancake and kit zoom are indeed slower in the dark which is expected but they do eventually find focus.

a hit of meth wrote:

The unusual thing is that i have not noticed my other lenses hunt so much or fail to find focus. The pancake and kit zoom are indeed slower in the dark which is expected but they do eventually find focus.

If the lens works properly on any body, then I would argue it's unlikely to be the lens. Try it on a Panasonic body in the dark (or even in good light). Try it at different distances to see if they all work properly. If it works, I don't see how the lens is at fault. Lenses simply take directions from the body. The body has to give the proper directions. If the lens can take proper directions from any body, then it's probably functional. That's my understanding anyway.

If you do see a problem on a Panasonic body, then there may be something wrong with the lens.

If no problem on Panasonic bodies, it's possible the Olympus body will utilize the lens better with a future firmware upgrade.

I wish I had more time to test this but I've been on the road since my first post, I'm moving from one place to another right now and I'm not always able to check my results on a proper screen so I haven't bothered just yet.

I was able to do a quick comparison (two weeks ago) with the lens and the kit pancake and it's definitely not focusing well in low light. When I half press, it does that hunting thing once or twice and fails to focus. Sometimes when I half press immediately after, it is able to find focus but not always. The kit zoom is able to focus right away.
This is with the single rectangular AF box in the middle. When I change the settings to cover a wider 3x3 area, but still with the same size AF boxes it seems to be able to focus on something within that area, and the chances of it finding focus in low light increases significantly. Actually, I only did a handful of tests but it almost always finds focus with this 3x3 grid.

I don't know if that helps to identify if there is an issue or not but I don't remember this lens behaving the same way in the past. Since the kit lenses, both pancake and zoom don't exhibit the same issues in low light with the single af point in the center, I'm suspecting the lens. It could be with this particular combo but I don't see any other reports of issues from other users.

EDIT: Body firmware is up to date. Lens is 1.1

I've had some time to test it at night again. It definitely seems to be the lens. I gave the contacts a good cleaning and it still fails to focus on the first try. I tried my only other current panasonic lens, a 14 2.5 and it focused rather quickly as well. The kit pancake and zoom don't have issues either. 
The lens seems to focus fine under the same conditions on my Panasonic GF3, so it's really odd this particular combination doesn't work in the dark.

You have had such terrible luck with 14-42mm lenses. Your Olympus 14-42mm gives you problems too:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61246579