Fellow Outlaws,

I received my 975 software update cable this past Friday and attempted to perform the update on my 975.

Everything was going fine until I reached the "Verify Serial Port" step. When I hit the "Verify Port" button, I received the error message "Couldn't initialize serial port on USB Serial Port (COM12)"

I believe I followed all the instructions. I verified that the drivers installed correctly ... the red light is on, and if I unplug the cable from my computer the COM12 port disappears from Device Manager (thus I am fairly sure I am choosing the correct serial port in the Updater software).

I also opened COM12 in a separate terminal program to verify that there was no OS/driver/hardware issue opening the serial port (and was successfully able to open it).

I've contacted Outlaw for assistance, but in the meantime I was curious if anyone else ran into this issue (and if so, did you find a workaround?). I'm trying to do the update on a laptop running Win 7 64-bit.

- Eric

Did you install the drivers BEFORE installing the USB adapter for the first time? If not, it's possible windows loaded some other generic driver and even though you now have the correct driver loaded, windows is still loading that wrong driver. If that's the case, you'll have to disassociate that wrong driver from the adapter. It can be a pain but it's doable.

The short answer is no; Windows installed the drivers when I first connected the cable. I too had the thought that the drivers Windows installed might not be the correct ones, so using Device Manager, I confirmed that the drivers installed exactly matched the drivers included with the 975 software update (including the same version number for the various files that made up the driver).

I should be able to find a way to test the cable w/ my laptop to ensure it works (by connecting it to a standard USB->serial adapter and doing a loopback test), but assuming it works, I'm still stuck. If it doesn't, I can try reinstalling the drivers or find another computer to use.

I just updated my 975 Saturday (6/28) no issues at all. I am also running Windows 7 64 bit.

Well, I got the update installed, but it was a bit of a convoluted process. Thanks to Ben from Outlaw for reaching out to me and giving me some pointers.

In short, I was never able to get the update to install under Win 7/64-bit, despite verifying the cable worked fine (by using another USB->serial cable and two terminal programs to do a loopback test).

I ended up running the updater software in a Win XP virtual machine using VirtualBox, which worked just fine. I seem to be an isolated case, so this isn't something I'd recommend others try ... but it did work for me.

- Eric

If I had to guess, based on my experiences with USB to serial adapters, I'd point my finger at whatever windows installed with your initial plug in. It can really gum up the works when that happens. Glad you got it installed!

That's pretty likely since you mentioned "another" USB to serial adapter. USB-to-serial is almost always an FTDI chipset these days. (A few years ago it may also have been Prolific, but I haven't seen many of those around lately.) Point being, you probably already had an FTDI driver installed. Depending on the software you got with the previous gadget, anything can happen.

Just completed the update using my 15" MacBook Pro Retina running Mavericks. No problems at all. Original version was 3.3 (I think), now running 5.3. No noticeable differences noted. My one gripe with the Model 975 is that after power up it still takes 6 seconds before you can select an input. This is not a problem when using a manual remote, but programming my Harmony One was a pain.

Also it would have been nice to see programmable channel names (the Game, Disc, Video, TV, Aux. are not exactly representative of what I have connected - Apple TV, Roku, Oppo BD Player, Philips Int DVD player and a Samsung International VCR) but we can dream and I cannot grumble at the cost/performance ratio of the Model 975. Still a thoroughly likable device. Drives my Rotel RMB 1075 Power Amp a treat.