New to Arduino: Can't get HP computer to recognize board

Development Tools IDE 1.x
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Hi all, hope you are well today!

I have been given my first Arduino board to learn for a project at work to make small parts dispensers. I hooked it up to my HP laptop, downloaded the Arduino IDE from the Arduino website for Windows 7 and above. (I already had to uninstall the version from the Windows App store, this did not fix my issue.)

The Issue:

I can't upload any scripts/sketches to the board! Additionally, on the online interface, the online plugins don't detect a board when plugged in - the message returned says "We could not find any board." This happens for auto-detection and also when I choose the Arduino Nano board - on an HP and a Macbook Air.

Is Arduino Nano incompatible with HP computers, i.e. is my plight futile?

The error messages from the IDE say "Programmer not responding" and "Problem Uploading to Board."

I suspect that it is a hardware issue with the board and that is beyond me.

What I've Tried:

I have had my sketch verified virtually. It is copied correctly from the Make: book, zeroes vs. O's, capitals and all.

In the IDE program, I have set my board to "Arduino Nano," my processor to "ATmega328," and my port to "COM1," which is the Serial Port that appears when the board is connected via USB cable.

I have plugged the board into all three of my USB ports - two say "SS" so I guess they're SuperSpeed 3.0 ports. All three work on other USB devices like my Bluetooth mouse or for charging my phone on occasion. All three provide enough power to make LED's on the Arduino board blink on and off, triggering once per second. Apparently, how I received the board from my boss, the board already has the script from the book running, even from Pin 13 (made me think it worked with failed upload).

Likewise, all three USB ports show up in my Device Manager as "USB Serial Port (COM1)." I changed this from the original "COM3," which also did not work. No other COM# is in use and I have no other devices to my knowledge that use one. I have not tried other COM numbers.

I tried changing the driver to the "Arduino.inf" file but my computer warns me that it can't verify driver compatibility. The instant I clicked to proceed with the .inf file, my computer crashed. It then restarted after a couple minutes with no changes.

I have tried one other USB cable.

I have tried the online IDE on a Macbook Air laptop - same failure of communication from the board. I will be trying tomorrow at work on other computers.

Background and Hardware:

I'm brand new to Arduino. I've had a few college years' experience of scripting (MATLAB only). And as for tech experience, I get nervous when I have to mess around with drivers, but I can navigate and press buttons.

Computer: HP Laptop, Intel Core Processor, 64-bit OS, x64 based processor
OS: Windows 10 Home

Board: Arduino NANO 3.0 w/ ATmega328 chip

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First issue is that you are probably selecting the wrong COM port as COM 1 is usually a windows reserved port.
It was probably fine at being COM 3 as that is the normal start number for most other COM enumeration devices.

When you say you changed the COM port number what do you mean by that ?
What do you also mean by all the com ports are now COM 1 ?
If you made any manual COM changes they may need to be RESET !

Some people have had issues with USB 3.0 but by the sounds of it you may have been OK.

Many NANO clones need you to select OLD BOOTLOADER from within the IDE.

Could you also take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum.
It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.
Other general help and troubleshooting advice can be found here.

3

Hi ballscrewbob,

Thank you for your reply.

ballscrewbob:
First issue is that you are probably selecting the wrong COM port as COM 1 is usually a windows reserved port.
It was probably fine at being COM 3 as that is the normal start number for most other COM enumeration devices.

When you say you changed the COM port number what do you mean by that ?
What do you also mean by all the com ports are now COM 1 ?
If you made any manual COM changes they may need to be RESET !

Some people have had issues with USB 3.0 but by the sounds of it you may have been OK.

Many NANO clones need you to select OLD BOOTLOADER from within the IDE.

When I say I changed COM3 to COM1, I mean that I went into the Advanced tab of the Serial Bus Port settings and changed the drop-down menu at the top to COM1 as it was not apparently in use. A video I saw suggested that maybe dropping the COM down to the lowest possible would yield solutions - it did not solve my problem, nor did dropping to COM1 cause any more.

What I mean by "all the COM ports say COM1," I mean that when I plug the USB cable into any of my 3 ports, it always says the same COM #, whatever I set it to. I may have misspoke.

I will change it, though, probably to COM3 or COM2, but I'm not sure the COM# is the issue. I will definitely try ATmega328 (old bootloader) for the Processor, though!

If the change in Processor works, it doesn't explain why auto-detect couldn't detect my board on the online IDE.

ballscrewbob:
Could you also take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum.
It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.
Other general help and troubleshooting advice can be found here.

Could you elaborate further on where I could improve my posting etiquette? I followed your other Posting Tips and have been searching around Google and the forums for my answers a full day with no avail before requesting help here in this thread.

Thanks Bob!

4

People changing the COM number in the advanced tab from windows usually end up having to reset the com stack for windows.

Don't use COM 2 as that too is a reserved port under windows.

As far as Arduino boards are concerned it is better to let windows manage the stack and assign the ports as needed otherwise there could be other problems similar to what you see.

As for the online IDE I presume you mean the CREATE EDITOR ?

That needs the plugin to have been installed correctly and for the user to have said YES and agreed to any of the pop ups that occurred during the install. Declining any of those pop ups will prevent that editor from working and detecting boards.

5

ballscrewbob:
People changing the COM number in the advanced tab from windows usually end up having to reset the com stack for windows.

Don't use COM 2 as that too is a reserved port under windows.

As far as Arduino boards are concerned it is better to let windows manage the stack and assign the ports as needed otherwise there could be other problems similar to what you see.

I see. I will definitely change it back to COM3.

ballscrewbob:
As for the online IDE I presume you mean the CREATE EDITOR ?

That needs the plugin to have been installed correctly and for the user to have said YES and agreed to any of the pop ups that occurred during the install. Declining any of those pop ups will prevent that editor from working and detecting boards.

I do mean the Create Editor, but I also refer to the Device Manager. If I remember correctly, I did choose Yes to all pop-ups. Since this week, I have returned my Arduino Nano board to my boss who handed it to me, and I now have an UNO to try.

Thank you very much for your help here!