Hi David, I have seen drivers part work / part fail before, on various hardware's.=20 7 OS does do some strange things, reasons unknown. The only fix for many=20 of these cases has been to contact the software vendor and try to get=20 them to twiddle with the driver, to fix the software/hardware=20 conflict/failure. However this has not always been possible or successful. A driver installed in 7 may say all is good, and does go through it's=20 actions, where OS thinks all is okay, but driver part fails somewhere. You mentioned your replacement laptop hardware is a Thinkpad. The vendor=20 to this brand, does run various pieces of big brother applications,=20 (depending on the build of the OS and if it has OEM modifications=20 installed), which could cause some conflicts. This is also a possibility. However in your case, it could also be MS big brother intercepting the=20 driver possibly. 7 onwards are very different OS beasts to XP. The VM-XP build, is just that a version, which makes the driver think it=20 is connected to an XP hardware machine. The driver does not know the=20 real situation. The hook links between the VM-XP and 7 real hardware, do function. This=20 is all software manipulation stuff. VM has been a common work around to=20 the MS silliness to these OS variations which do dumb things. So without reasonable digging, my points above are just guesses. Lastly, when you start the VM-XP any software/hardware drivers inside=20 the VM-XP, (even though you know different, and this includes your real=20 connected hardware devices), thinks you have an OS-XP and hardware in=20 the real world! Tricks with software. Sometimes frustrating! Peter ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 1/01/2018 7:12 AM, David C Brown wrote: > Just rechecked and it is windows 7 not 8 that I am running. > > As you say: if it was a driver issue I would expect the ICD2 to fail > completely. As it is it connects OK; it will program Ok; it just > can't connect to the debugger in the PIC. > > But that is the only difference. The cables are identical and I have > made new cables from the ICD2 to the chip. Baffled. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > On 31 December 2017 at 19:25, Harold Hallikainen=20 > > wrote: >> I wonder if it has to do with USB drivers. We had to go through some >> monkey motion to get USB drivers installed. It's documented at >> http://ftp.uslinc.com/ftp/Products/JSD-100/Documents/ >> Technical/Windows%208%20USB%20Driver%20Installation.pdf >> . >> >> If it were a driver issue, though, I'd expect MPLAB to not see the ICD2 = at >> all. >> >> I'm still running MPLAB 8.92 under Winows 7. It continues to work well. >> I've tried migrating projects to MPLAB X without success. >> >> Harold >> --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .