I did try that. I still get intermittent failure. Interestingly though, I am able to connect occassionally to any given usb port on any of the afformentioned machines. So I now if I am able to connect long enough to load he code I do that and then disconnect. After that I use the 9v battery connection to run the solution. This will become an issue if I need to print output at any point as it just disconnects when ever it seems to feel like it.