Why can't I run two USB serial adaptors on the same machine?

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My work involves interacting with legacy hardware that uses serial ports. I often have to monitor more than one serial line, and for the purpose I have a couple of the common USB serial adaptors. When I connect both of them to the same (Windows 10) machine, irregularities show up. Both ports show up in device manager, but only the first one that I plug in to the USB connector works. The other one indicates port not open when I try to send data via RealTerm.

I have also seen the situation where when I plug the second adaptor in, its port comes up, but the one for the other adaptor disappears. Does anyone know a way that two devices can happily coexist on the one machine? Thanks in advance.

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BruceV On

Just ion case this helps anyone in the future......

The problem seems to be caused by the fact that one of the adaptors was coming in via a (powered) USB hub. When I liberated another native port on the machine so I could host both serial adaptors directly, everything worked fine.

Not worth hunting the cause down, a solution is at hand.