If your credit card machine stopped working using the RDP kit, or you have a general Serial to USB port issue with an updated driver disabling the device/making it unusable, follow the steps below to fix this.
First, right-click on the com port in question, select Properties, then Driver Details. Take a screenshot of the drivers names and locations.
Now, roll back the driver to a February 2008 version. After the rollback is complete, technically the port will work immediately. However, any time Windows pulls any sort of update or in its infinite wisdom finds a “newer” version of the driver, we are back to square one.
In order to completely fix this, delete files for the new driver we previously screenshotted. PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT DELETE serenum.sys file, as it is used by both new and older drivers. Doing so will possibly hinder the proper operation of the driver/inability to install an older driver.
After you delete newer driver files (in our case those are ser2pl64_1.sys and ser2pl64_1.dll, our next step is to prevent Windows from updating the driver again.
If you are on a Server OS or on Windows 10/11 Pro version:
- In Device Manager, find Hardware IDs for the device (Properties – Details – Hardware IDs). Copy those (Ctrl + C) and paste them into Notepad for example.
- Open Group Policy Editor (type gpedit.msc in start and press Enter)
In the Group Policy window, in the left-hand pane, select Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Installation > Device Installation Restrictions. On the right, find the “Prevent installation of devices that match any of these devices IDs” item and double-click it.
- Select “Enabled”, then press “Show”. This is where you copy the Device ID’s to from Notepad.
- Hit “OK” and then Apply. You are done and Windows will stop automatically updating the drivers for that device only.
- Either reboot the machine for changes to take effect, or go to the command prompt and type gpupdate /force for Group Policy changes to take effect immediately without a reboot.
For Windows 10/11 Home:
- Press Windows + R, type regedit, and press Enter to open Registry Editor.
- Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows.
- Right-click Windows and choose New -> Key. Name the new key WindowsUpdate.
- Right-click WindowsUpdate and click New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the new value as ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate. Double-click it and set its value to 1. This will stop Windows 11 automatic driver updates. To enable the automatic driver updates again, set its value to 0.
The second option would be more global, but you can try this:
- Click the Start menu, type Change device installation settings, and click Change device installation settings in the search results to open the Device installation settings window.
- Select the Yes (recommended) option and click the Save Changes This will stop Windows 11 from automatically updating drivers.
- To enable automatic driver updates in Windows 11 again, you can access the Device installation settings window again and select the No ( your device might not work as expected) option.
