Serial Port Error

J

joely87

Member
Hi All,

I am currently teaching PICAXE in Adelaide, South Australia but since updating the programming editor and re imaging the computer the student all recieve a "serial port error - port not present or already in use" when they try to program the device. The only other software that was installed on the same image when the problem started occurring was ReplicatorG for a makerbot machine. And some roland software to control a MDX 40A CNC milling machine but this is a USB device. I was successfully using a version of Picaxe Programing editor V5.3.3 but this did not support the M2 parts which was one of the reasons for updating.

Does anyone have any suggestions about the cause of this issue and some possible resolution? I have purchased 5 USB AXE027 cables and have not yet tried them but if they work I will need to purchase another 5 at least and i do not have budget for this purchase at this point in time.

Cheers,

Joel Phillips
 
N

nick12ab

Senior Member
joely87 said:
The computer lab has 22 computers all with proper serial com ports.
Click to expand...
Good so that's narrowed down the problem a bit - proper serial ports never go wrong!

Firstly, to make sure that it's not a Programming Editor issue, can you download AiTerm and see if you can send serial data using that on COM1.

Check that the serial ports are configured correctly. Firstly, open Device Manager by right-clicking My Computer, clicking Manage, then selecting Device Manager in the left side of the window that appears. Then expand Ports (COM & LPT) in the right hand side and it will tell you the numbers of the COM ports:

Is the COM port selected in Programming Editor the correct port? - If yes, does AiTerm work on the same port?

If you don't see any ports, then have you enabled them in the BIOS and made sure that there's no IRQ conflicts?

If everything seems to be correct then the problem is likely to be "ReplicatorG" hogging the serial port to check for when its hardware device is attached. If the "some roland software" USB device is actually a serial device with an internal USb-to-Serial converter then that software could also be responsible. If you have GENIE Design Studio or Circuit Wizard open then that will also conflict because it allows their rubbish GENIE chips to be 'plug-and-play' but when those programs are closed they will stop hogging the serial port. Open the Task Manager and click the Processes tab and look for any processes that might be hogging the serial port - use the Description column to help you identify the processes then terminate them. See if the serial port works then.

If that fixes the problem, then it will be back on next startup if these processes are set to start when Windows starts. ReplicatorG and the roland software should have options to turn off this behaviour but if it doesn't you can check the Startup folder and the few registry locations that also define startup programs and then delete the offending processes. The software packages will start the processes when necessary. If the software packages automatically make the offending processes start again at startup, use Group Policy Editor - but I can't remember where the relevant setting was.
 
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