Using cheap Prolific USB to Serial Adapters with Win 11

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BillBWann

Member
Has anyone got a cheap Prolific USB to Serial Adapter to work with Win 11? On my older Win 10 laptop, I used the “PL2303 Code 10 Fix” program that was created by running “PL2303_64bit_Installer” and it all worked fine so I ran the same procedure on my newer Win 11 laptop but it didn’t work.

When I look at Device Manager on my Win 10 machine, the USB to Serial adapters all show up under the “Ports (COM & LPT)” heading whereas on my Win 11 laptop, they show up under the “Other devices” heading.

I also tried updating the driver for the USB to Serial adapter in Device manager by selecting “Browse my computer for drivers” and directing it to the C:PLx64 sub-folder (and leaving the “Include subfolders” box ticked) and pressing “Next” but it simply said “Windows was unable to install …”.

Can anyone suggest something else I could do and hopefully get these Prolific adapters to work? I often use a HC-12-USB Wireless Serial Port Module and it will be annoying to have to revert to my older Win 10 laptop each time. I know I could always attach an HC-12 to a more compatible USB to Serial adapter but I’d prefer not to go that route unless I have to.
 
Hi, I know this post is quite old but here is a suggestion:

I use Snappy Driver Installer Origin to look for drivers. It is free and opensource. It is a bit tricky to use but once you get the hang of it it solves a lot of issues. I have had USB to serial chips on some modules that looked like CH340g chips but did not want to work with the CH340 driver. Snappy identified them as some sort of rip-off Chinese F232RL chips and installed the right driver.

you will find it here: https://www.snappy-driver-installer.org/
 
Prolific USB adapters were hit or miss in my experience. I tried several over the years, they used to work with earlier versions of Win10, then stopped at some version. IIRC some of the ones I tried were the PL2303HX variant, which never worked at all. I've had success with other cheap chips, such as CH340 and CP210x. Both of these need the hardware inverter mod as detailed by Goeytex (RIP, a favorite forumista of mine):
G

Post in thread 'problem with downloading the program onto the picaxe'

Renhar said:
So never gonna use an adaptor again, bought myself one of those serial - idc cables and tested it as well at home and now it works just fine :)

Thank you all for the help, I really appreciate it.


PS my adaptor was this: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-to-rs232-serial-port-adapter-transparent-green-24512, only it's not so cheep here in my country :)
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Your adapter was a USB to TTL with the data inverted. (IE idle high, data low). For serial download ( programming) , the serial line needs to idle low with data high. This is why you got the error message. All you probably...

FTDI USB adapters work perfectly well too. They generally cost more than the other two, but you can tweak their firmware to invert the signals so you don't need to add an external hardware inverter.

BTW the Windows 10 drivers for the CP210x and CH340 work fine on WIndows 11, even if they are not digitally signed.
 
Unfortunately, the 'cheap Prolific USB to Serial' adaptors are knock-offs and not the genuine article. The cheap alternatives took so much of the market that, in about 2012 or 2013, Prolific released a modified chip and changed the 'official' driver for the new chip that would not work with their old one. This did not save their market though - no-one trusts the Prolific adaptor name any more because they don't know what they're buying.

I have what I believe was a genuine pre-2012 Prolific adaptor but, by chance, had an archived copy of the old driver. Windows 10 'updates' the driver every few days, which is annoying but I just unload it and reinstall the older driver. I have a couple of AXE027 adaptors, which get nearly all the serial work that I have. I may have to retire my PL2303 adaptor when I install Windows 11 at some time in the future.
 
inglewoodpete said:
I may have to retire my PL2303 adaptor when I install Windows 11 at some time in the future.
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Come on in, the Win11 water's fine. I haven't tried any Prolific adapters on Win 11 but everything else works. The switch to Win10 was more painful, I had several devices (mainly scanners iirc) for which there were no Win10 drivers. E-waste is the price of "progress".

The worst thing about Windows 11 is the new PC hardware requirements, but those can be bypassed, for now anyway.
 
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