windows 8 does not support Prolific usb to serial driver

Anonymous
2012-12-16T07:15:01+00:00

windows 8 does not support Prolific usb to serial driver

what is the solution ?

We want to use windows 8 but due to this driver problem, we are not buying windows 8

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2013-02-26T21:16:26+00:00

windows 8 does not support Prolific usb to serial driver

what is the solution ?

We want to use windows 8 but due to this driver problem, we are not buying windows 8

Figure out when the hardware device manufacturer will be providing you with drivers for the hardware you want to use under the OS you want to use.  If they are not - then there you go.

Wrong answer. These drivers worked flawlessly with Win7, and now they are broken in Win8. Probably some simple switch in the device driver layer, and perhaps it is, indeed, a bug actually in the driver that is now exposed in Win8...but in the meantime I am telling all my customers, who depend on their GPS's functioning, to downgrade to Win7. 

Regardless of where the bug actually is, it is a backwards compat issue that breaks the interfacing of many GPS;s to Windows.

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Anonymous
2012-12-16T07:22:51+00:00

windows 8 does not support Prolific usb to serial driver

what is the solution ?

We want to use windows 8 but due to this driver problem, we are not buying windows 8

Figure out when the hardware device manufacturer will be providing you with drivers for the hardware you want to use under the OS you want to use.  If they are not - then there you go.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-11-19T12:12:00+00:00

    Paul, thanks for the information. 

    So I downloaded driver 3.2.0.0 and installed it as per instructions above (and on the web page where I found the driver). then tested the port using HyperTerminal (which still exists but is no longer bundled with Windows).  Voila!  Everything worked, data came streaming in!  Bliss.

    Then the data stopped.  The sender (a GPS unit) was still sending out data, but my laptop wasn't getting it.  So I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled.  Worked again for a few minutes, then ... nothing.  Did this a few times, using different USB ports, with stopping times varying from a few seconds to over an hour.  But in all cases the data stopped flowing at some point.  Except on one case, where my Windows 8 crashed.  Something about attempting to use memory that was restricted? 

    So I seem to be back to Square 1, unless somebody has another answer.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-06T16:14:51+00:00

    There is no problem about the Prolific chip in Windows 64-bit; it seems the problem is that the newer drivers do not support the older versions of the Prolific chip. Downloading and installing an old Vista driver like v. 3.2.0.0 and actively selecting that driver as described by Sergio solves the problem, at least in my setup with an older version of the chip in a Geonaute GPS in a Windows 7 SP1 64 bit environment: works flawlessly.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-11-05T22:19:53+00:00

    I did as you suggest and when I picked the driver from the list (there was only one driver shown), I got an error message "Driver will not start (error 10)".  I'm thinking it's the Prolific ship itself, which was designed for 32-bit machines and isn't compatible with 64-bit machines.

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