why drivers reinstallation is needed while plugging another Arduino Uno on XP

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

Hi,
Sorry for the newbie question but i'm wondering why i have to reinstall Arduino drivers on Windows XP when i plug different Arduino Uno via usb ? I thought that installing the drivers once would be enought so that every Uno devices could be automatically recognized by XP

We bought several Arduino Uno for our classroom, and it seems that we have to (re)install the drivers for each and every arduino unit we have so that it can be recognized automatically when plugged. It's a bit cumbersome as our student don't have administrator privileges on the computers and so can't install the drivers themselves.

Thanks for your help

2

The long answer:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usbcoreblog/archive/2009/10/31/how-does-usb-stack-enumerate-a-device.aspx

A picture however makes for a simple observation... see attached:

  • Ray

UNO VID-PID.JPG
UNO VID-PID.JPG1024×768 29.1 KB

3

Here is some more background information:

Here is an article that may help you solve your problem. It is a setting to tell Windows to ignore the serial number and treat all of the devices as the same device:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Knowledgebase/index.html?ignorehardwareserialnumber.htm

Note: The solution in the FTDI article will work for UNO and any other USB device, just use the UNO VID and PID.

4

Awesome ! Thanks guys for the helpfull answers !
I know i should have searched the forum a little harder but i think it would be nice if some of thoses links were mentionned on the official drivers installation howto :slight_smile:

As of the trick to set windows to ignore usb hardware serial number, the note saying that "If the device is connected to another USB port, the driver will have to be reinstalled for that port. " worries me a little bit as i have no (technical) way to restrict which usb port students will connect the Uno unit. But i'll try to test it shortly.

Agani, thanks a lot !

5

Assuming ignore usb hardware serial number is set:

If you had two USB ports on the system, you would need to install the drivers for each port.

After that, then any UNO should work in any of those two ports without further driver installation.