[chirp_users] ... Could not open Com 3

[Ken G]

Thank you Jim, also Simon, for the quick reply. Installing the old drivers fixed the problem. Is that alternative cable you mentioned readily available?

Ken G


-----Original Message-----
From: chirp_users-bounces at intrepid.danplanet.com [mailto:chirp_users-bounces at intrepid.danplanet.com] On Behalf Of Jim Unroe
Sent: Tuesday, 6 September 2016 7:01 PM
To: Discussion of CHIRP
Subject: Re: [chirp_users] ... Could not open Com 3

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 3:58 AM, Ken G <kdubya at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> I haven’t downloaded from my UV-5r for quite some time but today I 
> downloaded the latest version of Chirp, plugged in the cable and I get 
> the following error thrown up by Chirp - “could not open port COM3: 
> [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified.”
>
> .. and this error for the port in Device Manager of Windows 10  ..
> “This device cannot start. (Code 10)

It appears that you have a programming cable with a (counterfeit) Prolific type chips. When you first got it, you probably had to download, install and select the older (2007) Prolific v3.2.0.0 device driver to get it to work because Prolific device drivers since 2008 are intentionally incompatible with counterfeit Prolific chips.

You have either plugged the programming cable into a different USB port causing it to be configured with the  latest Prolific device driver or Windows 10 has, on its own, decided to upgrade the device driver back to the latest version. In either case, all you have to do is to go back into Device Manager and choose the older v3.2.0.0 device driver again.

Basically you will be repeating steps 6 through 11.
http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Drivers.php

If you don't want to deal with this again in the future, you can get a programming cable with a different brand of USB-to-TTL chip. FTDI chip based programming cables are popular for this reason.

Jim KC9HI