Brian Hall - Tech News, Consumer Advocacy, Geeky Observations Prolific USB to Serial Adapter Cable Drivers for Windows 7 - Brian Hall - Tech News, Consumer Advocacy, Geeky Observations

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Prolific USB to Serial Adapter Cable Drivers for Windows 7

I recently purchased a USB to Serial adapter cable (from MX-MART) for my MacBook (running Windows 7 Beta 1, via Boot Camp) to control my Uniden BCD396XT radio scanner. Since the control cable that came with my radio is a 9-pin serial data cable, and my MacBook does not have a serial port, I had to purchase the adapter. However, when I tried to install the downloaded drivers in Windows 7, it gave me a message saying, "Device driver software was not successfully installed." I right-clicked on the device in Device Manager and selected Upgrade Driver... and browsed to the path of the driver. After selecting the appropriate path, Windows 7 thinks for a minute and then displays a window saying, "Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it." Further down in that window it says, "USB-SERIAL CH340, Access is denied." I also tried downloading the latest drivers from Prolific's web site (Apparently Prolific is the manufacturer of the chip inside the USB-serial adapter cable), but those also failed. I'm not sure why Windows 7 has such a hard time installing this simple driver that apparently works well on Windows Vista.

I e-mailed MX-MART's customer support and very quickly got a helpful reply with an attachment that had a new version of the driver for Windows 7. After installing the driver (and answering "Yes" to the prompt asking you if you want to install an unsigned driver), the USB to serial adapter cable works perfectly and I'm able to program my BCD396XT scanner radio using FreeSCAN. Hopefully this will work for other folks who may be having trouble with the drivers for their USB to serial cable in Windows 7. Download the driver (145KB)

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posted by Brian at 10:48 AM 7 comments permanent link

7 Comments:

  • Thank you for sharing...

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tue Nov 17, 01:39:00 AM MST  

  • You are using a 32 bit version, correct? Your drivers are not working for me under 64 bit windows 7. This sucks! I have been so impressed with every other aspect of 7, except for this piece of junk. I think i'm just going to have to break down and buy a pci-e serial card.

    By Blogger Sean, at Thu Dec 03, 05:31:00 PM MST  

  • I was using Windows 7 32-bit when I posted this. I have since upgraded to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Unfortunately, MX-MART does not provide 64-bit signed drivers for this adapter. You can temporarily turn off 64-bit driver enforcement by entering the following commands into a command prompt run as Administrator:

    bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
    bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

    Reboot and you should be able to use the 64-bit drivers that are included in the above file. You may also have to sign them using the Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider tool.

    By Blogger Brian, at Thu Dec 03, 07:34:00 PM MST  

  • I'm still getting driver install failure. Frustrating.

    Dave

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Sun Dec 20, 10:26:00 PM MST  

  • I have Windows 7 (64 bit) and I can not get my Prolific based usb-to-serial to work. I always end up with a Device Manager error: "This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)". I tried running the CH341ser.zip and that doesn't help either.

    Abe

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Sun Jan 10, 10:07:00 AM MST  

  • I am running Windows 7 (Build 7600 64-bit) and I can not get my Prolific based USB-to-Serial cable to work. I always end up with the following Device Manager error: "This device is not configured correctly. (Code 1)".I also tried installing the ch341ser.zip file and that did not help because when ever I tried to manually update the driver by pointing to the folder created by ch341ser then the Device Manager states that the most current Prolific driver is already installed.

    Abe

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Sun Jan 10, 10:31:00 AM MST  

  • Hey Abe,

    I had the same problem. I removed the Prolific driver by running the Prolific install program again. Then, I opened the Device Manager and plugged in the cable in each USB port. When the device appeared in the list with the "!" icon, I right clicked and selected uninstall. I did this for all four ports on my laptop (Acer 5610Z). Then I removed the cable and ran the install for the CH341SER. After that, I plugged the cable into the USB port and it worked.

    By Blogger Barry, at Sat Feb 06, 09:06:00 PM MST  

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