Arduino uno board not detected when connected via USB no matter what OS

Question

I was working with Arduino in Win 8.1, when suddenly it stopped work. I tried to reinstall the drivers and IDE several times, but it didn't solved.

In Win 8.1, when I plug the arduino, I get the pop up message:

USB Device Not Recognized in Windows

Also, when I try to upload a sketch, I get this error in Arduino IDE:

avrdude: ser_open(): can't open device "\\.\com5": the system cannot find the file specified

I switched to Linux (Debian Jessie 64 bits), but it also doesn't get recognized, and I getting the same error, only the port Is different.

I am guessing is a problem with avr, but I don't know what can I do about it.

Other symptoms:

• In both systems the port tool in IDE is grey, so I can't choose a port.

• When I press the reset button in Arduino, nothing happens.

• The led L (13) is constantly shinning. It never blinks or stops.

Solutions I tried:

• Reinstall drivers
• Modify the preferences.txt file to change the COM port
• Fall back to a previous IDE version
• Change the usb cable

Answer 1

If the port selector in the IDE is greyed out, and the OS is throwing an error, it's likely the Board is damaged. Either The firmware on the serial device or the chip is fried somehow. What's happening is that the usb part is failing, so the Com port part never works.

Answer 2

Arduino is most probably aproaching the wrong com. You can set a new com. in the IDE of arduino under settings. Change it to the available com. It might be required to find out in Windows/ system configuration for the available coms Maybe something there is wrong.