CH340 driver problems

Using Arduino IDE 1.x
1

I'm a complete noob and I managed to fry my first and only official Arduino, so I decided to buy some cheap ones from china as to not waste a whole lot more money.

Theses are the ones I'm having trouble with:

Eventually I figured out they have the CH340 chip and I found the appropriate driver. I already had the Arduino IDE installed so I just installed the CH340 driver without any other changes.

So it's not working. I read somewhere that the CH340 driver should be installed before the IDE, so I did that on my wife's computer and everything is all good. No issues communicating.

On my own computer, I have since:
Uninstalled Arduino IDE
Uninstalled the CH340 driver
Reinstalled both, in the "proper" order.

The result is the same, whenever the CH340 containing board is attached, attempting to compile returns:

java.lang.NullPointerException
	at cc.arduino.LoadVIDPIDSpecificPreferences.load(LoadVIDPIDSpecificPreferences.java:48)
	at processing.app.debug.Compiler.createBuildPreferences(Compiler.java:592)
	at processing.app.debug.Compiler.<init>(Compiler.java:193)
	at processing.app.debug.Compiler.build(Compiler.java:96)
	at processing.app.Sketch.build(Sketch.java:1109)
	at processing.app.Sketch.build(Sketch.java:1084)
	at processing.app.Editor$BuildHandler.run(Editor.java:1955)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

If I swap the CH340 containing board for one of these, it works fine:

I'm about to reinstall windows. :astonished:

2

Hi crashwg,

Try download this driver in the link.
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=349780.0

Good luck

3

I should have specified in my third paragraph what driver I was using (unsuccessfully on my computer but successfully on my wife's.)

It was in fact the one you just linked to.

For future reference, this is the driver that works on my wife's computer but not mine:

4

You have the same OS on the computers? Win7, Win10, etc?

5

Both Win10.

6

That error is specific to the short lived IDE version 1.6.5-r4 which had trouble with certain boards. I think it has to do with the way the menu shows what board is attached by matching VID/PID to a board nickname. I recommend installing 1.6.5-r5 which is the current version.

7

Thank you dmjlambert. +1 Karma for you.

8

You're welcome. As you go through life and fry various boards (like I do) I recommend keeping them. I have a ziplock bag labeled "bone yard" for this purpose. Sooner or later you will want a component from the bone yard. I have had some parts fall off of Nanos which are otherwise good, because they had a cold solder joint. Well, I go to the bone yard and pick a part, and repair. In another case I ruined the regulator on a 5V Pro Mini, and on a separate occasion I ruined the main chip from an HC-05 Bluetooth board. I pulled the regulator off of the HC-05 board and revised the Pro Mini to make it a 3V3 version.