I recently got an arduino uno r3 and uploaded the blinking sketch. Everything went swimmingly. Now, a couple of days later I bought some things to start a project I had in mind, came home wrote up a small sketch to test out some LEDs but it won't upload to the arduino. The arduino lights up and executes the first sketch, but when I try to upload the sketch I get an error saying that the arduino is not connected to COM port 14 which is the same usb port I used last time. I'm on Windows Vista, and tried reinstalling the drivers and the enhanced arduino environment but nothing works. Also in Device Manager nothing comes up when I plug in the Arduino. I found this website http://blog.ethanfrei.com/2011/10/arduino-uno-revived.html on another post but am not really sure if this is the problem. Any suggestions?
TL;DR- Arduino Uno R3, can't upload, Error no arduino Com Port, Windows Vista, reinstalled drivers, all lights work, runs last sketch, other post said might be ATmega8u2.
It seems that every time I unplug and plug my arduino back in I have this problem of it not being picked up. Everything still same as above.
Update: In case anybody else runs into this same problem: It seems that unplugging the Arduino causes the usb port to stop responding and the COM ports won't pick up any new hardware. What has worked for me is to plug in a regular usb storage device and safely eject it. Right after I plug my arduino back in and picks it up just fine. As soon as I figure out how to fix this from occurring over and over I will post back.