Add me to the list as well. I'm a long time arduino user and have implemented literally thousands of them. Now with my HP laptop, I suddenly cannot talk to these boards (Uno R3, Deu, Dec, Sanguino, Mega and our own brand - with and without the FDTI chip - all of these boards in quantity, so it's not just a single board or board type)
Devices show up in the com ports, I have tried switching ports, (both physically and forcing a change in the device manager and by plugging more than one board into the machine to "push" the new board to a higher com port), I have uninstalled the devices and reinstalled/ updated the drivers from the latest driver files that come with 1.05 (as well have tried 23, 22, 18, 17 - because this used to work)
I can see the device in the Arduino IDE and board type is correct (it even auto selects the correct one for me so there must be a handshake of some type going on).
Trying to upload a sketch yields "not in sync: resp 0x30. And no tx/rx lights blink.
ALL of these boards work fine on other systems both mac and PC. So it must be my PC.
I have tried removing the HP security tools (thinking that they may be preventing the ports from allowing these non standard devices in). But then these tools would have been on the machine from the get-go and this used to work.
I have tried older IDE's (back to 17, as I say, this used to work)
I have tried changing baud rates at both the IDE level and the port level in the device manager's advanced tab
I have tried programming the board on another system (this works) and then bringing those boards to the HP and running code that interfaces with those boards (like serproxy and AS3 GLue) which works fine on other systems, but fails to work on this PC.
ALL other port type devices - keyboards, mice, harddrives, cameras etc. work flawlessly on the HP (even ones that you would think would have driver issues, seem to just work - like a mac mouse or keyboard)
I'm just baffled. HP is no help - all ports working nominally.
It was suggested in another post to try a Parallel to USB hardware adapter but there was so much suspicious unsigned driver software associated - not to mention the suspect poster in the forum - that I didn't take the risk.
I have trolled the forums both here and abroad to find suggestions and have tried them all.
I've tried different USB cables (but really these work on other machines, so that's not it)
I've tried the loop back test - and this is the only clue - If you fire up the IDE and use the serial Monitor, the board remains "linked" to the IDE even when you fire up Arduino IDE without board plugged in. So when I type anything in the serial monitor I get a correct echo back - with no board attached! Me thinks there is a flaw in the serial monitor (and yes, my machine) if this can work. If I choose a different port, then the serial monitor fails. But the port where the board used to be attached works great.
Any suggestion welcome.