Ardruino Nano and Pro Micro CH340 Not recognized by Win 11

Hello,
Newer here very frustrated as Ive purchased a couple of Nano,s and a Sparkfun Micro, and both boards are totally unrecognized by Win 11 with USB 3.0 ports on my laptop. Ive tried forcing legacy hardware, restarting in driver signing off mode, of course downloading the driver directly from the wch vendor. No Luck it never recognizes the board at all and ports remain greyed out. When I try to install the drivers it never recognizes a device and wont allow me to select the driver files manually as it says they are not for a x64 system. Banging my head against the wall... any help?
Thanks, Chris

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Thank You.

Hi @chrisrhzg

Please tell us which USB to serial adapter chip your Nano board has. This is the largest black chip on the bottom of the board.

The chip will usually be identified by writing on the top. This might say something like "WCH CH340G" or "FTDI FT232RL".

Examples:

WCH CH340

CH340

📷

SparkFun - CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

FTDI FT232R

📷

ICIC-SS28-X-K232-01 by oomlout - CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)


If it isn't clear, alternatively you can provide the link to where you bought the board from and we'll see if we can determine the chip from the product listing.

Make sure the USB cable is completely plugged into both the Arduino board and the PC.

If that doesn't help, you may have a damaged/defective or charge-only USB cable. Try a different cable.

Either of the above can result in the power connections being made (and thus LEDs lit on the board), but no data connections (and thus no port for the board).

When you say "it", do you mean Arduino IDE only, or have you also found that it isn't recognized in Windows Device Manager?

2 Likes

Can you try in USB2 ports?

Can you try on a Win 10 (or earlier) computer?

Good question!

It is not recognized in Device manager or IDE. Ports just stays greyed out unless I plug in my Uno then it will recognize that board. For some reason I cant update the USB drivers to work with the CH340 chipset. Ive tried disabling all my security and Ive exhausted all the guides on how to load them including driver signing. It is the WCH340C chip. Ive tried two different cables unless their both charge only cables ( dont think so). Would very much like to find a solution, anyone know if U can emulate XP with win 11 maybe I could run a virtual machine or was considering backing down to an older version of the IDE ? Im currently running 2.1.1

Thanks,
Chris
Thanks

If the base OS (Win11) isn't seeing the devices, then nothing running on top of it - VM or IDE - is going to see them.

Have you tried these devices, and the cables, on other computers?

unfortunately no, going to try my sons PC running 10 later. But from what ive been reading it seems 11 and 2.1.1 are just not going to work with this CH340 chipset. very frustrated as there are tons of guides and different avenues to install the drivers believe ive tried them all with 0 luck.

Thanks for the clarification. Please try this troubleshooting procedure and then report your results in a reply on this forum thread:


:exclamation: This procedure is not intended to solve the problem. The purpose is to gather more information.


  1. Open the Windows Device Manager.
  2. Select View > Devices by type from the Device Manager menus.
  3. Open the "View" menu.
  4. If there is a to the left of the "Show hidden devices" menu item, click on "Show hidden devices" to disable it.
  5. Disconnect the USB cable of the Arduino board from your computer.
  6. Take note of the contents of the "Other devices" and "Ports (COM & LPT)" sections of the Device Manager tree.
  7. Connect the Arduino board to your computer with a USB cable.
  8. Select Action > Scan for hardware changes" from the Device Manager menus.

Did you see any new device appear in the Device Manager tree after doing this? If so, please tell us where it is located in the tree and what it is named. I know you already told us it is "not recognized", but it is possible you were only looking in the "Ports" section of Device Manager and didn't notice the device under the "Other Devices" section so I want to make sure.

You can repeat steps 5-8 multiple times if you are not sure.

I don't know what you have been reading, but I can tell you that many (I would guess easily in the thousands) people (including myself) are using Windows 11, Arduino IDE 2.1.1 and boards with a CH340 USB chip successfully.

It is possible your problem could be caused by receiving defective Nano boards from a bad batch with some physical damage that causes them to not be recognized, but there is no universal problem with that chipset.

My Windows 11 Pro with CH340 drivers and it works alright.

Just been reading all the methods to install the drivers with no luck. Going to order another cable to try.. ive searched all the device manager options it doesnt recognize the sparkfun pro micro or either nano at all on two different win 11 pcs

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