Cannot upload to Adafruit esp32-S3-tft from HP laptop Win10

I have the above device which I have succesfully uploaded & run from vscode on my MacBook. I have been given an HP laptop on which I have done a fresh install of Win10, VScode and PlatformIO.
Everything runs fine compiling a .bin file with no errors. But I just cannot get that to upload to the esp32. Connecting the device brings up COM3 in the device manager and the usb driver file is usbser.sys but the upload process gives the following error message

Building .pio\build\adafruit_feather_esp32s3_tft\firmware.bin
esptool.py v4.5
Creating esp32s3 image…
Merged 2 ELF sections
Successfully created esp32s3 image.
Configuring upload protocol…
AVAILABLE: cmsis-dap, esp-bridge, esp-builtin, esp-prog, espota, esptool, iot-bus-jtag, jlink, minimodule, olimex-arm-usb-ocd, olimex-arm-usb-ocd-h, olimex-arm-usb-tiny-h, olimex-jtag-tiny, tumpa
CURRENT: upload_protocol = esptool
Looking for upload port…
Auto-detected: COM3
Forcing reset using 1200bps open/close on port COM3
Waiting for the new upload port…
Error: Couldn’t find a board on the selected port. Check that you have the correct port selected. If it is correct, try pressing the board’s reset button after initiating the upload.
*** [upload] Explicit exit, status 1

checking the device manager after this shows that COM3 has disappeared.

I also get the same result if trying to up load the blinky sketch in the Arduino IDE.

I have managed to sort this out myself by using the adafruit WebSerial ESPTool and loading the factory reset image. This will then let me flash the platformio image from Visual studio code but only once. If I need to change the program and re-flash then I need to reset the esp32 to factory defaults first. Bit of a PIA there must be a better way.

Hey there!

Same problem here, did you find a solution?

Best, P