Arduino Serial COM ports missing or incorrect

by Visual Micro 11. March 2014 12:20

If you encounter a persistent problem where a COM port shows as the wrong number or Serial ports are missing entirely then this is most likely due to a corrupted windows wmi database.

By default Visual Micro looks for the "pretty" names of COM ports such as "COM11 - Arduino Uno". The pretty names are found in the windows wmi database.

If you would prefer not to find a solution to this problem then it is possible to force Visual Micro to work the "old" way, without using the wmi database.

In this case windows should provide Visual Micro with an accurate list of Serial ports.

To switch off wmi database usage ensure that the following three "Tools>Options>Visual Micro>Comunnications" options are set to 'False'

  • Friendly Port Menus
  • Friendly Ports Lists
  • Network Discovery

In the current release (14x.x) the side effect of disabling these options is that, wifi (yun) upload and publishing of files to an Arduino web server will not be available.

note: Visual Micro does not alter or install any com port or usb drivers