There is something weird going on with USB to serial adapters at the moment - especially ones with the Prolific chipset.
A lot of them appear to be fake chinese clones of the chip - which apparently some vendors aren't aware of, and even if the driver installs properly, it won't actually work. I've been trying to get the one
@tomcat59alan sent me with his faultmate to work, but Vehicle explorer won't recognise it. Then I looked in Device manager, and saw this:
View attachment 210309
So whilst it shows it's installed the driver correctly, it doesn't actually allow communications through the chip. I've tried a load of older drivers, and can't get it to work - I even found a load of posts online about it and various drivers that are supposed to work.. Some show it installing correctly as a Prolific device, but show as an 'Error 10' - Device failed to start - which is also the driver detecting the chip isn't genuine and not allowing it to work.
Apparently it's also more of a pain in windows 10 (I'm using 7 on this laptop) as even if you DO manage to find an older version driver to roll back to, it will just auto-update as it does at some point, and install the latest driver, and then not work again.
In the case of the faultmate here - I'm purchasing what is supposed to be a genuine Prolific USB-Serial adapter, and will test that to make sure it installs properly and works with the faultmate - both on the laptop, where I can take it to my RR and check it with VE, and on my windows 10 desktop, before sending it back. In theory, then if he has a USB-Serial adapter that just works, and will continue to do so even if windows updates, then it could be used for other things like the EAS unlock system too.
Fingers crossed....