COM Ports just went missing and cant be added through device manager or driver u

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

So I got my UNO R3 (Elegoo version) and it worked really good for a few days but now when I go to plug it in and upload a new sketch it doesnt allow me to select any com port expect the native port (COM1) and windows doesnt play any sound when the board is connected but it gets power and my last project still work so it think the board is okay.
Also I'm unable to add the device manually since everytime i try to add the port over the stupid "add legacy devices" option it gives me a device error (code 10).

So my question is, is there a solution out there to fix my shit or am I stuck with some corrupted drivers or something?

2

If it isn't showing up in Device Manager (even as a 'Unknown Device') then the issue isn't likely to be driver related. It sound more like a problem with the USB-Serial chip. I assume you've tried a couple of different computers and USB cables?

3

I had No chance to do so but Im will do that tomorrow if i can

4

If you get no sound effect when you connect the device, either the USB-serial adapter chip, USB cable, or USB port is bad.

Bad cables with failure prone data lines are very common lately (it seems like there are some low quality cables with this issue being used in starter kits). For boards with microUSB ports, cables that intentionally don't have data lines are common ("charging cables") - though not an issue for boards with full-sized USB ports.

If the USB port you're plugging it into is bad, obviously that won't work.

And, if the board uses a 16u2 as serial adapter chip, it is fairly easy to damage that chip (it's not clear to me exactly how this happens, but tons of people here report trashing the 16u2 while doing nothing that should have done that - the clone boards with different serial adapters are less prone to this failure mode)

5

i think i can swap my microcontroller since my board has a socket for the atmega328-pu, its a 1,38€ chip so i think its worth a shot

sadly im unable to test the board with another pc up front, so i will stick trying a different cable and another chip

6

Giant_Cookie:
i think i can swap my microcontroller since my board has a socket for the atmega328-pu, its a 1,38€ chip so i think its worth a shot

But that's not what's bad if you're not getting a noise when inserting the USB cable - that's not the USB interface chip.

The part that has failed (assuming it's not one of the other issues I mentioned) is the 16u2, that black chip near the USB port. It's somewhat ironic that non-user-replacible 16u2 fails more than an order of magnitude more often than the socketed 328p.

Snappy catchphrase: Don't change the tires if the car won't start.