Help, my PC doesn't see my MOTOTRBO radio!

"Help, my PC doesn't see my MOTOTRBO radio!". For quite some time, this was the urgent plea one would hear from technicians in the field. A connected MOTOTRBO radio could not be read and the CPS would give one or another error message.

I recently had such a call from a new customer, who also, is relatively new to MOTOTRBO. He had downloaded and installed the CPS, but was getting an error message when trying to read a radio. I was able to spot the cause and solve his problem - purely from experience. Therefore, for the benefit of the general radio community, here is a list of things to check, when you experience such difficulties:-

Is the radio working correctly and the battery charged? Can the radio switch on; transmit and receive correctly? If this is a display model, does the battery gauge show "full bars"? Try using another battery or try connecting another radio to eliminate this as a cause.

Are you using a known good, Motorola original, programming cable? The fake cables you get on certain trading websites are known to be problematic. Spend the money and buy the right thing!

Is the USB port, to which the radio is attached, in a working condition? Try plugging the radio in on another port. Confirm that Windows makes the "duding" USB Device Attached sound and not the "dididid" USB Device Failed sound?

Does Windows see the device and does it install the drivers? Go to Windows Device Manager and see if there is a Network Connect called MOTOTRBO Radio #?. Confirm that there is nothing listed as an unknwon USB device.

Double click on MOTOTRBO Radio #? in Device Manager and confirm that the status is shown as device is working properly. If the status shows an error, uninstall and reinstall this device driver. Further details about getting Windows to install the driver can be found in the MOTOTRBO CPS help text.

Disable all other network connections. The CPS will sometimes give error code 595 if there is an IP address conflict between the radio and other IP devices.

The default IP address of a MOTOTRBO radio is 192.168.10.1. If your Wireless or Wired LAN uses addresses in the range 192.168.10.x, you need to arrange with your network administrator to use another subnet - otherwise you will have to switch off your WiFi and LAN eevery time you program a radio.

Lastly, are you using the latest CPS? The MOTOTRBO CPS is 100% backwards compatible but not forwards compatible. At the time of writing this post, the latest CPS version is 8.0 (build 410). [Edit: As at 12.09.13 CPS version 9.0]