Continuing the discussion from CP210x driver does not work with ESP32 on Windows 10:
2022-04-02T22:00:00Z
Summary
General problems with USB cables and UART chips and instability of Windows drivers
Hi
I have been solving the same problems for a long time with many ESP8266 as well as ESP32 development boards (NodeMCU, D1 etc…). The same experience applies generally to UART converters, not only CP210(x) but also CH34(x).
On most cloned UART chips and their development kits, there is a high sensitivity to the voltage in the USB port and to the incidental resistance and impedance in the connection cable.
Especially the choice of the USB cable is crucial - it shall always be in absolutely perfect condition, which is a problem if the cable is used for charging the device only and rarely for a real serial communication.
Even a small deviation in voltage or cable impedance will shut down the communication and the chip will then appear randomly unavailable - the driver in Windows then reports ERROR 10 regardless of the driver version installed.