Before I tear all my hair and teeth out, can anyone please help. I have tried googling an answer and have not found anything.

My Setup:

  1. Win7 64bit
  2. Arduino 1.6.9 IDE freshly reinstalled
  3. COM14 port in Arduino IDE checked
  4. Under Device Manager COM14 shows as: "USB Serial Port (COM14)". Not as "Arduino...(COM14)" as some pages have shown
  5. I am not sure if I have a real or copy of the Arduino. As far as I can figure out I have a real one, on the back I have the FT232RL chip
  6. I have bought 2 Arduino Nanos and both show same error
  7. Both Nanos came pre-soldered, (no noob soldering by me)
  8. I have tried uploading sketches on my Win7 platform AND over a Raspberry Pi, both same error

Now perhaps most importantly I previously ordered an Arduino from the same retailer and that one worked. The two I have now dont work.

The problem:

  1. When I try upload I get the same message every time: avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

    a. it does this 10 times and then fails

    b. Rx and Tx LED's are ON and do NOT blink at all at any point in time

    c. Green power LED is always ON, no blinking

    d. Pin13 LED blinks consistently

    e. I have tried the extreemly annoying reset "trick" before uploading, after uploading, at the same time, during uploading, and nothing works

I am seriously at a loss here. I have had an Arduino Nano work on my pc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated please.


Sorry for posting this as an answer, I don't have enough rep to write comments yet.

1) Have you tried different USB cables? A dodgy USB cable could power the Nano just fine, giving the impression that it's properly connected, without not actually supporting the data rate required for programming. The fact that something shows up on a USB port on your computer makes this explanation less plausible, though.

2) I notice that there are different versions of the Nano, some with ATmega168 and some with ATmega328. If you have the ATmega328, maybe try selecting "Arduino Uno" in the IDE? If you have the ATmega168, maybe try "Arduino Mini"?


The Arduino.cc developers changed the bootloader on official Arduino Nanos to communicate at a different speed. Try setting Tools → Processor → ATmega328P (Old Bootloader)


The baudrate for those is 57600. Try checking for an error in your boards.txt .

  • Do you have experience with this? I've never seen any board using 57600 as a baud rate (not saying it doesn't exist), to me it sounds more like a driver issue. A link to a datasheet or other web reference would go a long way to support your (short) answer – Madivad Jul 30 '16 at 0:36
  • Yes, all my nano clones use it for UPLOAD_RATE . Can't very well give you a datasheet reference, the chinese vendors are not that verbose. – user400344 Jul 30 '16 at 8:25
  • And my 3V minis from RobotDyn will only accept 19200 baud... – user400344 Jul 30 '16 at 8:26
  • ... and for the sake of completeness: my uno clones use 115200, and my pro mini 5V clones use 57600 baud. – user400344 Aug 1 '16 at 6:48

try a different COM port. I had a corrupted COM3 and it gave the exact same error message that you got

  • If the Arduino is connected to COM3 then he can't just change to a different COM port. – gre_gor Aug 24 '18 at 13:04

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