"Error initializing emulator: Could not find MSP-FET430UIF on specified COM port"

If you use the board search funciton, you'll find a lot of threads dealing with this or similar problems. Including solutions.

By doing so, you perhaps could be already playing with the LaunchPad instead of waiting for an answer.

Did you find what was the error? It was something in your installation. I am having the same problem now...

Error initializing emulator: Could not find MSP-FET430UIF on specified COM port

Dear Colleagues,

After reading the posts and not finding a satisfactory answer, I discovered that by opening the Project Properties Page and changing the Connection: settings

from: TI MSP430 USB1 (Default)

to: TI MSP430 USB2 and clicking on the Debug button, the connection would fail (as expected).

When I then set the Connection back to TI MSP430 USB1 (Default) and clicked on the Debug button, the connection worked.

Presumably,  this causes some sort of refresh or rescan to take place. This is very repeatable and allows me to continue learning about the LaunchPad.

It should be noted that I am running the 90 day trial of CCS and was previously working with a MSP430-EXP5529 Board that uses a MSP-FET430UIF JTAG Emulator.

I also have a a Limited  IAR compiler installed. I was going to use this but found the tutorials were all using CCS, So I am not using IAR at present.

Possibly this confused Window7 or CCS.

I hope that this helps all the people that are having this problem. It might even be helpful to the TI Engineers as a possible lead to the actual problem.

Wishing everyone success and happiness.

I know this isn't really a fix for your problem, but I have to make one point  because I had the same error and it was stumping me for a while, There really ought to be a troubleshooter sticky for dummies like me. 

Before you do anything else always try unplugging and replugging the launchpad first!

theres my 2c

According to TI, when the Launchpad G2 is plugged into USB port, the driver and other DLLs for that device are "automatically" installed if you have CCS or IAR in the system. But your experience seems to indicate that CCS or IAR will try to find "MSP-FET430UIF" and could not find that.

A Launchpad is not a FET430UIF.

I have this same issue.  CCS v5.2 will not allow me to access my LaunchPad.  I get the same error message all the time.  It had worked before, then i did a project using a real FET430UIF for a while.  Now I don't have the FET430UIF connected any more, and it won't let me talk to the LaunchPad.  I tried all the suggestions above, to no avail.  Why does it think I have an FET430UIF?  I can't find anywhere that the tool type is set to FET430UIF.  It is as if it decided on its own that since I used an FET430UIF once, I am no longer allowed to use LaunchPad!

OK, found the problem.  I have another USB device from another vendor that can't be plugged in at the same time.  It doesn't indicate any problem, but the two can't co-exist, or CCS thinks my LaunchPad is an FET430UIF!

I'm having the same problem. I tried a few suggestions, but nothing has worked so far.

I had the same problem, it did not resolved until I "uninstalled" the MSP430 Application Uart (COM3) in device manager and then did a scan for hardware changes.

Thank you soooooo much, you really point out the key problem!!! Now I solved it as well