[Ham-Computers] USB to Serial Adapter Problem

[Herb Gerhardt]

OK, I have been pulling my hair out and I can't afford to pull out any more,
so I have decided to seek some help from this group.

I have one of the Purple USB to Serial Adapters (MCT Model U232-P9).  I
originally had problems installing it on my Toshiba Satellite laptop running
WinXP Home Ed with SP 2.  I finally overcame that problem when MCT a few
years ago updated their driver for this device.  Well it worked for me for
some applications but not all of them.  I then obtained a uTNT TNC which is
the a USB connected TNC made in Greece (www.elcom.gr) which I have not been
able to load on this particular laptop.  It loaded OK on my old CTX laptop
running WinMe but will not load on this Toshiba.  I just assumed that since
this USB TNC is basically another USB to Serial Device, it has a conflict
with the MCT adapter already installed.

Well last week a friend of mine purchased one of the IOGEAR USB to Serial
Adapters from Wal-Mart.  So, I borrowed it to see if it would work on my
laptop.  Well it would not install.  I kept getting an error message of "The
drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28)".  This happens to be
the exact same error message I was getting when I tried to install the uTNT
TNC.  It appears that the driver for these devices just will not install
properly or at least it is not recognized as being installed on my
particular laptop.  My friend then installed it on his Sony laptop also
running WinXP without any problem using the same installation CD and
drivers!

That got us to try a little harder.  We proceeded to uninstall the U232-P9
adapter, and then tried to install the IOGEAR adapter with no success.  Then
tried to install the uTNT TNC with no success.  We then uninstalled these
attempts and tried to reinstall my original U232-P9 adapter which used to
work, but now it would not install either.  I kept getting this Code 28
error in Device Manager for my Serial Port listing for these devices.  We
tried everything under the sun and got no where!  We even loaded the drivers
directly into Windows/System32/Drivers, that still did not do the trick.  We
always got the same Code 28 error.

I finally rolled back my computer to a previous Restore Point before I
attempted to load any of these adapters and my original U232-P9 adapter
began working again.  So, here I sit.  My original USB to Serial Adapter is
working again on most programs but not all of them.  I can live with the
situation I now have since this laptop does still have a hard wired Serial
Port that I can use with my TNC for APRS and Packet Radio.

Now the question to the group is:  Has anyone else ran into similar
problems?  If so, how did you resolve the problem?  Like I stated before,
this problem is caused by something internal to my specific laptop, since
these adapters work fine on other laptops.  Something somewhere is screwed
up but I don't have a clue as to where that might be nor how to fix it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Herb, KB7UVC
NW APRS Group, West Sound Coordinator
Our WEB Site:  http://www.nwaprs.info