COM Port Issues - Seems to be a never ending problem...

Projects Programming
1

I've been programming Ardunios for years. A constant problem I run into is the COM PORT stops communicating. When I browse this FORUM or the internet, there are tons of entries regarding COM PORT issues. Most, if not all, deal with missing COM PORTs. All of my issues, and the reason I finally decided to create this topic. It is not a missing COM PORT but a COM PORT that had been working fine and all of a sudden decides to stop. Case in point. I'm working with a NEW ARDUINO R3. Writing some code, downloading and testing. After about the 10th download (number of download attempts is not important, only mentioned to indicate that it was working fine...) it mysteriously stops working reporting the following message:

avrdude: Version 6.3, compiled on Jan 17 2017 at 12:00:53
         Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
         Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Joerg Wunsch

         System wide configuration file is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/etc/avrdude.conf"

         Using Port                    : COM6
         Using Programmer              : arduino
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 115200
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x2d
...

avrdude done.  Thank you.

Problem uploading to board.  See http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting#upload for suggestions.

I then start swapping out ARDUINO boards and code that has worked in the past and they fail.... but all of a sudden one will start working so I go back to the original board that failed and IT STARTS WORKING... ???

VERY FRUSRATING!!! What's going on???

2

I think that it is a common phenomenon, and it has happened to many including me. The IDE has just been working for hours and suddenly it is not working. Connect/disconnect USB/Virtual COM Port and updating VCOM driver; but, there is no good result. Then close all the IDEs, re-open the IDE and everything is working fine. Sometimes, I had to re-boot the PC to make it work. Now, I have accepted it.

3

I've spent the last two days chasing a similar problem. I'm assuming Windows 10 for this discussion. When I loaded the Device Manager and looked at the Ports selection, nothing was listed for the Nano I was using. I looked at the chip on the Nano and, as expected, it was the CH340 chip. So, I googled "CH340 download" and found this site. I downloaded and installed the device driver, rebooted and reloaded, and tried to load/run Blink. No joy. However, I did see the CH340 option listing in the Device Manager...some measure of progress.

I also noticed a change in the Processor option of the Tools menu. I figured what the heck, a small silicon brick might make a nice stocking-stuffer. So I selected "Old Bootloader" and tried the compile/upload again. Taa-Daa...it worked. You might see if that works for you. BTW, I was using the latest version of the IDE, Rel 1.8.8.