Serial to USB cable installatioin fails

[BudV]

I could not find another appropriate newsgroup, so I have to put this here.

I'm using WinXP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 1100 with a 4-port powered USB
hub.

I am diabetic and, of course, I have a blood glucose testing device. This
summer I purchased software that uploads the device readings to my PC. The
package included a device-to-serial port cable. I then purchased a serial
to USB conversion cable. The installation went fine. I uploaded data and
everything worked nicely.

Today I tried to do another upload and it "could not open the port". I
unplugged and replugged the cable, XP saw it as new hardware, but it could
not install it "because the wizard cannot find the necessary software".

Any help out there?

 

[ms]

I could not find another appropriate newsgroup, so I have to put this here.

I'm using WinXP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 1100 with a 4-port powered USB
hub.

I am diabetic and, of course, I have a blood glucose testing device. This
summer I purchased software that uploads the device readings to my PC.
The package included a device-to-serial port cable. I then purchased a
serial to USB conversion cable. The installation went fine. I uploaded
data and everything worked nicely.

Today I tried to do another upload and it "could not open the port". I
unplugged and replugged the cable, XP saw it as new hardware, but it could
not install it "because the wizard cannot find the necessary software".

Any help out there?

Did you plug it into the same USB port?
If you use a different port on the PC chances are XP will see it as a new
device.
Is there any other device that might be using the port, like a printer ,
that was not on/connected when you first used the device

Are there any settings on the software that need configuring, or may have
changed.

If I were you I might try the software manufacturers website, and the
USB-to-cable manufacturers website for support, just in case it is a known
error. Often just doing a web search will turn something up.

 

[BudV]

Your response started me thinking, and I found the adapter driver CD that I
had forgotten about. I installed it and got further into using the
application software to do the upload, but still failed the transfer. Tech
support from the application people said that this is a known problem for
people NOT using the Keyspan adapter, so I ordered that.

For what it's worth, the first time everything worked was when I was
plugging directly into the PC's USB port. Since that time, I had a rough
experience installing an HP all-in-one, which included installing a 4-port
powered USB hub and making changes in Device Manager to all the USB hub
entries and subsequently undoing those changes. Whatever I did, I ended up
with a different environment which rendered the current adapter useless. If
you don't hear from me again on this, it'll mean that the new adapter solved
my problem.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Lil' Dave]

You have two potential problems.
Serial to USB adapter, and a USB hub.
Consider using the hardware as the mfr designed it for data flow to the PC.
That is, the PC's serial (com) port.