Solved Serial Port Not Connecting

[ChrisRoss]

Hi,

I'm trying to use a serial port on my PC, the GB board (H97-D3H) has a COM port header and I've used a back panel connector with cable to connect to this. I checked and serial port in enabled in BIOS. The driver is the Microsoft driver serial.sys and claims it is working. I believe the support for the COM header connection is through the chipset. I've downloaded and installed all the latest drivers from Gigabyte. I'm trying to connect to a device to update firmware and connection is via serial connection.

Any suggestions for troubleshooting? Would I need a specific driver that supports the chipset to run this serial port? Lots of USB-serial and virtual serial port drivers found by googling but can't find another driver for Win7 x64 to try. Any other suggestions on how to get the device to connect?

 

[carwiz]

I tagged in on this post just because I'd like to know too. I've never been able to get a serial port working on Windows 7 and I'm not exactly a newbie. I have a USB to serial adaptor I'd like to use for a printer. I know the printer works because I've used it on a weighing scale. And the last time I posted on the subject, the response was pretty slim.

 

[ChrisRoss]

OK finaly got it going I installed serialmon which is a port monitor which didn't seem to do anything but installed a driver hhdspmc64.sys and after that I was able to connect. However I did sequence it differently when I tried, that is connect to the port then plug in and power on the device, rather than attaching, powering then trying to connect, so might have connected any way.

Note that I connected a port to the COM header on my motherboard and apparently the chipset supports the serial port on my H97 Gigabyte board, so it is not adding a PCI/PCI-E addin card and it is not running a USB-Serial converter. So drivers etc are probably different.

To Carwiz, I see your Intel DH67BL-B3 board does not have a serial header on the board so you can't use my solution. My H97-D3H board has as did a cheapy B75-D3H board I built a system from recently to which I added a back panel connector like this:

Startech COM 9 PIN Serial Male TO 10 PIN Motherboard Header LP Slot Plate 0065030831383 | eBay

the other option is $5 (+/-) PCI or PCI-E addin card from Ebay and find a driver online that works with Win7. Might take a bit of searching but they are out there, most only come with drivers up XP or Vista.

Or if you really need to run the device, buy a card that incudes win7/8 drivers like:

PCI Express Serial Card - 2 Port | 16550 UART | Includes Half-Height Bracket | StarTech.com

Presumably you could return it if you couldn't get it running. The USB-serial port things often only support up to XP, I tried a recommended model model for my device on a Win8 laptop and no joy, wouldn't communicate. I think you might be trying to marry together a serial driver and a USB driver which varies depending on which computer you hook it up to.

Good luck!

 

[carwiz]

Yeah, I don't know if I can get another card in unless I rearrange or remove the TV card expansion slot plates. It's pretty full back there.

+1