Occured problem with modules fitted by the CH340 chip. This chip serves as a converter between serial interface and USB.
Very often we can meet this chip on Chinese-made modules, in my case it is quite regularly on products based on popular ESPxx processors from Espressif Systems company.
With complete regularity I encounter a problem with the driver of this chip after connecting to a PC with Windows system. We will illustrate this problem and its solution on the ESP8266 module, which is equipped with the aforementioned CH340 chip in the Windows10 environment.
After connecting this module to the PC, the computer automatically recognizes the CH340 chip and installs the appropriate driver from its repository, in my case it is version 3.8.2023.2.
When trying to start communication with the ESP8266 module through the serial port in my case COM3, an error appears in the terminal window with the serial port not available for communication:
Unable to connect to COM3: Cannot configure port, something went wrong. Original message: PermissionError(13, 'A device attached to the system is not functioning.', None, 31) If you have serial connection to the device from another program, then disconnect it there first.
Process ended with exit code 1.
To solve this problem is neccessary use oldest driver for CH340 chip. You can find the CH340 driver for download in the download section. Extract the downloaded file from the archive and run it. A dialog box will appear, click the INSTALL button to install. After successfully installing the driver, the error message in the terminal window will no longer appear. CH340 driver you can find it for download in the download section. Extract the downloaded file from the archive and run it. A dialog box will appear, click the INSTALL button to install.
After successfully installing the driver, the error message in the terminal window will no longer appear. Now your Windows is able to communicate over a serial line with the ESP processor via a serial line.
You can verify whether you have uploaded the correct version of the driver for the respective serial port in the hardware properties dialog.
All necessary files for "update" CH340 chip driver you can find in the section download .