ARC-XT Pro and Windows 8

[PVPD730]

I'm trying to do some reprogramming of my 396XT via the new Windows 8 machine, and it seems as if there's some type of disconnect between the scanner and the laptop. Here's the error message that comes up when I enter into communications setup: Software has not detected your scanner, please check scanner is switched ON and connected. Read instructions how to setup scanner communication.. Well, the scanner is obviously on and I'm using the USB cable that I purchased from scannermaster. I've also installed the Prolific PL2303 driver. What else am I missing? I never had this issue on my Vista machines...

[Bucko]

Win8 does not play well with some drivers, I had the same issue with my win8 Dell. Check in your device manager to see if your computer see's your cable. To get mine to work I installed the old Vista driver then from the Device manager I updated the driver to the latest. After doing this and a re-boot it was able to see my USB-1 cable. I did have to download the latest driver and navigate to it from the update driver in the device manager, letting windows find an update did not work.

[jaspence]

I believe the problem is the Prolific chipset being incompatible with Windows 8. The following link has a short explanation at the bottom. PL-2303H / 2303HX / 2303HXD Drivers | Prolific USA

[garys]

You need a different USB to serial adapter. There are several threads here about this and the problem is that the Prolific chip is not Win8 compatible and it doesn't appear that Prolific is going to update the drivers for that chip set.

I have one USB adapter that uses that chip and it doesn't work. I also have a USB GPS with that chip set and it too doesn't work.

The problem is not with ARC XT, it's with the USB adapter.

[PVPD730]

Thanks for the responses! I found a solution and fix to this issue. First go to this link on scannermaster: Uniden USB Cable. Halfway down the page is information directed at Windows 8 users, however, the download link for the PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1.5.0 is no longer active on Uniden's wiki page. To get the 1.5.0 driver, you will need to go here: PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1.5.0.zip download - 2shared (it's a .zip file). Finally, unzip the package and install your driver. That's the process I followed, and all is working fine.