Basically I need to be able to unplug the Arduino while the serial port is open(basically while I am connected to it in PuTTY, Termite, etc) and be able to plug it back in again without having to quit termite/putty. At the moment, if i unplug it while connected to it in PuTTY, and plug it back in, it still shows up in device manager with the exact same COM port, but i cannot do any serial communication to it despite the COM port being detected. EDIT: I believe that this is the wrong section to put this thread. the new thread is here: Make Arduino serial port hot-swappable on windows? - Project Guidance - Arduino Forum