OK, this is bad news because, unlike the dodgy unlabeled "CH340", we haven't managed to find techniques for making the boards with these chips work normally. In addition to the EEV Blog forum discussion I linked in my previous reply, there are a few others about these chips here on Arduino Forum:
- Failing to upload anything
- Arduino nano unable to establish connection with laptop
- Connecting to my PC - #13 by simon78duino
- Unable to upload to UNO or Nano - #23 by paul9531031
- Problem with CH340 Driver
- Upload to ESP8266 fails: "PermissionError(13, 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.'"
Maybe you could find something of interest there.
But circling back to the "Process Explorer" results, it makes sense that you didn't get any processes because the form of the FT232R's "handle" is different from that of the CH340, so the CH340-specific search query I provided in my previous instructions is inappropriate for the FT232R. You can try it again with these adjusted instructions:
- Double click on the file named
procexp.exein the extracted folder.
The Process Explorer application will start. - Select Find > Find Handle or DLL..." from the Process Explorer menus.
"Process Explorer Search" dialog will open. - Type
\Device\VCPin the "Handle or DLL substring:" field of the dialog. - Click the "Search" button.
A search will start, as indicated by the presence of the text "Searching..." at the bottom of the dialog. - Wait for the search to finish.
(note that this time the search query is "\Device\VCP" instead of "\Device\Serial")