Stellaris LaunchPad (EK-LM4F120XL) virtual COM port not working on Windows XP

Hi Dan,

try to use a different COM-Port Number! I had a similiar problem on Win7 which could easily be solved be re-numbering the COM-Port.

http://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/stellaris_arm_cortex-m3_microcontroller/f/471/t/224490.aspx

Rgds
aBUGSworstnightmare 

I already tried that. See first paragraph under Device Manager images.

Followup:

I installed Microsoft's hotfix KB943198 on my Windows XP Pro SP2 machine, but still cannot establish serial communications on the Stellaris LaunchPad's USB DEBUG port virtual serial port, even though the Device Manager and USB View tools have no complaints about the port.

I modified the "usb_dev_serial" example for the Stellaris LaunchPad to use UART1 instead of UART0 and added connections to a MAX3232 and have confirmed that the "Stellaris USB serial port" does work correctly on the Stellaris LaunchPad's USB  DEVICE port. I also confirmed the DEVICE port works with the "usb_dev_bulk" example along with the "usb_bulk_example.exe" application running on the PC.

I know very little about USB, but in looking at the .INF files for virtual COM ports on both the DEVICE port and the DEBUG port, it appears they both use the same Windows "usbser.sys" driver. However, the DEVICE port is a single-function port while the DEBUG port is a composite-device port and somehow it is not behaving correctly in my Windows XP setup. Again, everything works correctly on my Windows 7 laptop machine. I even tried another Windows XP Pro machine with no luck!

Dan

Are there any T.I. developers out there that can help me with this problem?

Is anyone else having this problem with Windows XP Pro SP2?

I would still like to get the my Stellaris LaunchPad boards working with the virtual COM port on my Windows XP Pro SP2 machines. All of the StellarisWare examples that use serial output fail to communicate without any complaints on Windows XP Pro SP2, but work fine on Windows 7.

In summary, I cannot get the Stellaris LaunchPad board serial communications via the virtual COM port to work on Windows XP Pro SP2 (I've tried 2 different machines), but I have no problems with Windows 7. Using an external TTL-to-RS232 converter, I have confirmed that all 8 UARTs on the Stellaris LaunchPad's LM4F120 are functional.

Dan

I will try to find an older machine with XP SP2 and re-verify here.  I should be able to provide some feedback today.  I am not aware of any XP specific issues like this.  I think a few of our team still run XP and I know that our EK-LM4F232 board uses the same ICDI and com port.  At it's release time XP was common in the office and was therefore widely tested.

Appears you have performed all of the normal debug steps and eliminated the obvious and common causes.  The fact that the device manager shows the serial port correctly and it works in windows 7 means that physically things are working correct on the LaunchPad.  

Dexter

I was able to test on a Dell Latitude D620 running XP and SP3.  The UART connection to the command line interpreter in the qs-rgb application worked perfectly.

I can suggest a couple of things to try.

Try Service Pack 3.

Try different ports of the machine or using versus not using a HUB.  On the FTDI based debug mechanism we had several issues with hubs or different ports.

Try once again doing a complete uninstall of the XP drivers Windows likes to make drivers sticky so it may take some research to figure out how to make sure they are completely off the machine and out of registry or other records of the machine.  Then go through the driver installation guide again very carefully always taking the manual options and not letting windows do any searching direct it staight to the latest driver download.

Sorry i cannot provide a more definitive answer or direction.  Let us know the result of these tests.

Dexter

OK, here's what I've done:

Trying other USB ports on the PC and USB ports using an intermediate USB hub made no difference.

I also did everything I could think of to clean out the registry of residual effects as well (a tool called USBDeview was very helpful for that). However, no amount of uninstalling and re-installing made any difference. The results were same, it still didn't work!

So, on my test XP machine, I upgraded it to Windows XP Pro SP3 - this addressed the problem. The virtual serial port works there!

But, I have other problems with SP3 - that's why I never upgraded to it. So, I decided to try to figure out why the USB communications were failing without complaint. I found a USB sniffer tool called USBlyzer USB Traffic Analyzer and downloaded and installed the 33 day trial installation on my SP2 machine to trace USB transactions on the virtual serial port. In a simple trace of attempting to send characters from HyperTerm to the virtual serial port, USBlyzer reported an "Invalid Parameter (Invalid Pipe Handle)" error on a Bulk or Interrupt Transfer Request  from a driver called "usbccgp" with each character sent. Running the same trace on the SP3 machine, the transfer requests were successful (as was the serial communications).

In looking at the installed Windows drivers, my SP2 machine contained a driver "usbccgp.sys" that was called the USB Common Class Generic Parent Driver, version 5.1.2600.2180 with a date/time of 8/3/2004 11:08 PM. On the SP3 machine, the same driver was version 5.1.2600.5512 with a date/time of 4/14/2008 12:15 AM.

After several initially unsuccessful attempts (and a round with Windows Safe-Mode), I was able to replace the "usbccgp.sys" driver on my SP2 machine with the version from the SP3 machine and reinstall the Stellaris ICDI drivers. The end result was success in getting the Stellaris virtual serial port working with the Stellaris LaunchPad on the SP2 machine.

However, sometimes, but not always, uninstalling and reinstalling the Stellaris ICDI drivers results in the old "usbccgp.sys" driver being reinstalled as well, causing the serial communications to stop working again until the newer "usbccgp.sys" driver is again used!

Anyway, in summary, it looks as if the Stellaris ICDI virtual serial port does not work with Windows XP Pro prior to Service Pack 3 (I've only tested SP2 and SP3, so I'm not 100% sure about SP1 and earlier). I am not totally comfortable with my ad-hoc driver installation as it is not a standard way to update the driver, but for now, it appears to work. However, upgrading to SP3 is not an acceptable solution for me on my development machine. I would like to see an official solution from T.I. to address this problem (even though I know Windows XP is outdated and Microsoft is stopping support for it).

Dan

Glad to hear you have a solution even if it is not the most desirable one.

Unfortunately we do not have the resources to go back that far and modify our drivers to support Windows XP with Service Pack 2.  

I strongly suggest you update to at least Windows XP Service Pack 3, if not Windows 7.  If that is not acceptable you will have to continue to use your manual usbccgp.sys update process.

You may also be able to go through the history of Microsofts minor updates and fixes between SP2 and SP3  to see if any of those include the newer file you need.

Dexter

OK, fair enough.

FYI, I found a Microsoft Hotfix download for KB945436 that, even though its topic appears to be unrelated, it appears to address this problem as far as I can tell. It upgrades the "usbccgp.sys" file for Windows XP SP2 to version 5.1.2600.3356 with a date/time of 4/22/2008 2:12 AM.

I backed out my manual replacement from the SP3 version and installed this Hotfix and all appears to work as it should.  Installing this addresses my concerns of not having an official way to upgrade the driver to a working version.

Thanks for your help.

Dan

I have the same problem. The Virtual port didn't work. I was updated with Windows XP sp2 to sp3 and the port works.

And I have the same problem. The Virtual port didn't work. My OS is Windows 8 Pro 64 Bit.