I have a laptop P4 3.0 Ghz which has only USB ports (no serial) and runs under WinXP Home edition.
I bought an adapter cable serial to USB. This cable comes with a driver "Huge Pine Serial to USB". The .exe file is to be run before plugging the cable onto the PC. Once run, the cable is recognised as a "USB-UART Controller" but not as a COM port. To get a COM port, the driver must be fully installed.
When plugged in, the install Wizard starts and invites to install the new hardware. I then force the wizard to install the "Huge Pine serial to USB" driver from the list. The installation is stopped after a few second and a window opens up which either say "access denied" or "data unreliable".

I first though the driver was the problem but I could easily install this driver on my desktop PC and it works fine.

Does anyone knows anything about this problem, a solution?
Any guidance is warmly accepted.

By chance, do you have any of the following turned on: firewall, anti virus, malware protection etc.? Any of these programs could stop installation, as it's happened to me on more than one occassion.

I'd also check to make sure that windows is up to date, including (specially) then critical updates. The drivers might be looking for something new(er) in windows, or vice versa.

Let us know if this helps!

All firewall, anti-virus and malware protections are turned off, but it still says "data unaccessible" (not unreliable as previously stated, translation error).
The OS had already installed the last WinXP update.
Is there anyone having a clue about the problem?

I'm guessing that the drivers on a cd...try copying the drivers over to your hard drive and then try installing them.

Also, you can try letting windows find the drivers via the internet.

By chance, are the drivers zipped (compressed)?

I actually copied the driver on the harddisk the first time before trying to install it.

I am afraid that no one can solve my problem... although seemingly simple.
Thanks anyway.

Have you tried letting windows find the drivers via the internet?

Are the drivers zipped? If so, have you unzipped them to their own folder then tried to install them (obviously not applicable if their not zipped/compressed).

I'll try to get some other folks in on this to see if they have any other ideas

The files are not zipped and are copied to the PC's harddisk before installation.
The install wizard find the right driver on the HD but cannot complete installation (access denied, data unaccessible).
I bought another USB to serial cable. The driver seems to be different as it does not refer to Huge Pine but to Prolific Technology.
I uninstalled all anti-virus and inactivated the Windows firewall, but still the installation cannot be completed.

There's not much info about either of these devices on the web. What are you trying to connect via the Serial Port? Are there any serial port settings available in the laptop's BIOS (the BIOS may not support the serial conversion that the USB is trying to do).

Since it works fine on your desktop, but not your laptop, I'd expect that it was due to a limitation of your laptop's hardware. I'd check the installation directory to see if there's a log file that may shed some light on what caused it to fail. Also, try checking your Event Viewer for any error messages that may shed some light on this.

I have acquired the same device and lost the driver for it. Kindly send the driver to my email: ezekiel@uplink.com.ph
Thanks!

sounds like they are not running as administrator or do not have administrator privilege.