VCOM Drivers Not Working after Changing PID/VID

Question

I ran into a problem when using Silicon Labs' CP2102 USB-UART bridge controller. Silicon Labs offers an application for changing USB related configuration values (PID,VID,Device Description...) so I changed the VID value to the ones assigned to me by the USB-IF Administration. All fields appear to have been correctly updated (I ca see that in Device Manager) but Windows reports that there are no drivers available. Before changing the VID/PID and device description everything worked well.

Any idea how to tell Windows to use the same drivers as before? Is it possible or perhaps even normal for a driver to be tied to a specific VID/PID and by changing it I basically "broke" the controller unless I write my own drivers?

OS: Windows 7 USB-UART Controller: Silicon Labs CP2102 More information about the controller: http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/usbtouart/Pages/usb-to-uart-bridge.aspx

Thank you in advance for all your help.

Answer 1

Take a look at the Driver Customization Wizard (AN220SW). If you create a driver with a matching VID and PID as your customized device you can get it to load again (as well as re-customize back to default, or something else). The documentation for this is in Application Note 220.