Topic: USB to Serial adapter problem, when I plug it in, Win7 thinks it is a mouse

[DaleReid]

I use some USB to Serial port converters, which up until now have worked just fine letting me have Weather Display or other programs use USB ports to communicate with serial, both RS232 and 485 devices.

All was well until recently when I no longer could communicate with a 485 device.  I checked the com port number and used TerraTerm to try to communicate with that port.  No luck, it said access was denied.  I used to see the line by line stream coming in, so that explained why the program wasn't dispalying wx data.

When I went to the Devices and Printers screen, I saw a second optical mouse. Hmm.  It turned out to be associated with the port I wanted.  Unplugging the USB/Serial device caused the icon to go away.  Strange.

I rebooted, let the other two programs that had been and continued to work properly come up, and then, while watching the Devices and Printers screen again, plugged in the USB/S device.  Boom, up comes another optical mouse!

I found a sequence of command prompt instructions to allow hidden devices to be seen, then went to the device manager and removed all com port number associations which were not active (greyed out).

Rebooted again,and the two stable devices were perking away, plugged in the device again and once more got an optical mouse detection and assigned to the port.

I cannot find a newer driver for the FTDI chip, something like a couple years old.  And the other two ports running have the same kind of dongle on them.  I'm perplexed because up to a short time ago, all came up properly and things were happy.

I guess I'm going to try to find another USB/S dongle to try, and I don't want to try changing to an RS232 because of the distance to the station I'm reading.

I'm hoping there is some way to keep Windows 7 from thinking this dongle is another mouse.

Thoughts?
Dale

[Storm017]

I don't know if this will work, but go to the Advanced setting for that comport and deselect Serial Enumerator.

[DaleReid]

Sadly, it did not.  But thanks for the tip and the setting was not easily found on first pass nor understood as to what it implied.

With it turned off, I rebooted the machine after a full shut down.  I had not only unplugged the USB cable, but also turned off the station, so that on the off chance that incoming data from a data sentence might have been recognized as a mouse, had been eliminated.

When I plugged the unit back in, the mouse image appeared and yet the under-icon descriptor was of a USB FTID device.

Grrr.

I'm going to see if there is another USB/serial adapter around, or try a test of changing to an RS232 for a test at least.

Thanks for the suggestion and I was hopeful!

[Mattk]

Gee have not heard this type of issue for years, so long ago in fact I totally can't recall what the fix was. I will have it archived it somewhere but don't have archive access for a few days. Others on here might remember?

[DaleReid]

No rush, but if you find something that might be helpful, please let me know.

The strange thing is that it 'was' working ok!

Oh well.  I'm hoping another adapter won't appear to Windows as a new mouse. I'll keep people posted. 

I was hopeful that telling the device driver to not check to see if it were a serial mouse might have fixed it, but unless the checkbox to have that function enabled, which I did remove and then reboot, does nothing there must be something else making this mischief happen.

Dale

[WA7FWF]

check out  https://www.taltech.com/support/entry/windows_2000_nt_serial_mice_and_missing_com_port or https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9226082/device-misdetected-as-serial-mouse

[DaleReid]

Some news:

I looked at the Device Manager profile, and went down to mice, I have ONLY a HID mouse listed, no serial, so I cannot disable that, per one suggestion.

I tried plugging in the offending USB/Serial dongle and after the device appeared in the list of stuff, went back, and still no serial mouse.

I then went the regedit path, found the correct registry value, and changed it to a 4 as mentioned in the other article.  With great expectations, rebooted without solving a thing.

I went through the Com Ports, and individually went into advanced and set each and every one to not treat or scan for it as a serial mouse, and even after cleaning those up, nothing.

Then, I noticed that I have a yellow triangle telling me that I have not installed a USB Controller driver for the computer.  I did a troubleshoot, it told me the same thing, and asked if I'd like to fix it.  Well, of course!  After much whirring of the disk and talking with the internet, it informs me that it cannot find a driver to install.  Nothing on my hard drive.  The computer did not come with an install disk for windows.  Nothing on Dell site except a bunch of frustrated other users looking for a driver, but no pointer to one.  The Dell site doesn't provide a driver selection, either.

So for the time being I'm still searching to correct the USB Controller driver error (how the USB ports work for the mouse, the keyboard and the other com ports is beyond me, but they seem to.

And as I've said, it "used" to work just peachy.

I'm getting frustrated, so may need to take a break for a bit, too.  But still hoping someone has more ideas to try.

[PaulHutch]

I wrote an article on this topic the last time I had hardware being auto detected as a mouse.
https://paulhutch.blog/2019/06/24/disable-serial-mouse-detection/

[DaleReid]

Thanks for the instructions and the complete write up.

I appreciate it and will see if I can screen shot it and print this out, and fill in the hyperlinks so I can find the meat of the matter if I need it again in the future.

It's things like this that made me keep an ongoing notebook with tips and tricks that are sorely needed once in awhile, yet not done so often as to be burned in memory, especially a memory that is older by the day.

Thanks again for not only doing the article, but to reply and posting it here.
Dale

[galfert]

I started using Evernote over a decade ago. It is a free service and has so many of my notes on so many subjects. You can easily create sections for any topic you need to keep it organized. Then enter in your notes. It is different than saving individual files on a computer, because all the notes are accessible in a folder like structure (like email if you use folders/tags). The best part is that it is synchronized to the cloud and now I can access all my notes from my computer or mobile phone. You don't need to rely on good organization either as the search function allows you to quickly find anything. An alternative to Evernote is OneNote from Microsoft. OneNote can work locally only if you prefer or it too can synchronize with your Microsoft cloud account. One limitation of Evernote is that they made it so that you can only synchronize with one mobile device which is probably sufficient for most, but if you want to synchronize a phone and a tablet then you have to upgrade to the paid plan. I should also mention that you can also use Google Keep which offers the same functionality.

[DaleReid]

Again, learning from others here and what they have found useful.

I had no idea such a service existed.

[MEgg]

Some news:
[...]

And as I've said, it "used" to work just peachy.

I'm getting frustrated, so may need to take a break for a bit, too.  But still hoping someone has more ideas to try.

Maybe a quick shot: Windows 7 sometimes has "filled up USB device tables".
Then it is not possible to register new USB devices, no matter what you do.
You have to erase this table then.
See:
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/165554-usb-driver-general-fix-problems.html

Maybe this helps.
You will have to register your USB devices again.

It all depends on the chip of the serial/USB converter.
For FTDI did you look here:
https://www.ftdichip.com/FTDrivers.htm
?

[DaleReid]

Thanks for the link to this article.  It contains some info I had not discovered.

As of right now, the computer is running OK, for the most part.  I may 'upgrade' to a Win10 machine that was at the local University for recycling and while a bigger box, will indeed run 10 and may be able to be as smooth as my other 10 running machines.

This is just tough to troubleshoot and when it powers off, there is no certain way that the assigned USB ports always come back to the same sensors.  Frustrating and isn't supposed to happen, but I've wasted a lot of time and coffee trying to see what I did wrong and sometimes you have to come to the conclusion that the software goofs up once in a bit.

Thanks again.  I'll study the info and perhaps glean a trick that I haven't tried yet.
Dale