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FIX & FIGURED OUT! First let me say that before I correctly installed the proper driver first, plugging the Cable into the Radio & the PC would put the Baofeng UV-5R into Transmit mode, and cause my PC to shut down. Here is how you fix that! Important: DO NOT plug in the cable to the radio until you get the driver installed. This may cause an excessive power demand from your PC's USB port and cause shut down or damage. Here is the quick & easy way to install a working driver that is already inside of Windows. Plug in the USB Radio Cable to your PC only. Wait for Windows to recognize the new device. (If Windows does not recognize device, go to Device Manager to configure USB Cable driver.) When asked for a driver/location select Install Driver Manually. Select HAVE DISC button. For the TYPE of device scroll down & select PORTS For the driver manufacturer scroll down & select PROLIFIC (The USB Serial GPS should be selected on right half of window.) Windows will give you a warning about the driver, just ignore and continue. Make sure you look to remember which Port it used. (Ex. COM7) If you forget which Port is used, you can bring up Device Manager to find the device & port. If you install Chirp software, you will need to configure it for the Baofeng UV-5R. Make sure you select the correct Port# or it will not find your radio. It will also give you a warning about Baofeng compatibility, just ignore that and continue to "clone" the information from your radio into Chirp software. When the radio is SENDING information to the software app, the light on the radio will blink RED. When the radio is RECEIVING information from the software app, the light will blink GREEN. Below is an alternate method for installing the software that came on the mini CD-ROM disc. Okay folks...I had the similar problems of not being able to install the driver, nor the WIN7 OS being able to assign a correct one so here is what I did to make it work - EASY! 1. Insert the small drivers disc into your CD-ROM/DVD-ROM. 2. Navigate to the root directory and you will see the Folder "M_K" 3. Go inside the "M_K" folder and you will see a folder named "USB" 4. Go inside the USB folder and you will see another folder named "新版驱动" Example: F:\M_K\USB\新版驱动 (where "F:" is your CD/DVD drive.) 5. Inside the folder named "新版驱动" you will see a file named: "PL2303_Prolific_DriverInstaller_v1.7.0.exe" 6. Copy that file to a temporary folder somewhere on your hard drive (C:) 7. You can now run the file without it crashing! 8. The installation should go without any issues and report that the USB driver has been installed correctly. For some reason, the file is not able to run from the root directory on the mini CD-ROM, and needs to be copied to your computer to run. You may also want to right-click ("I said, RIGHT-CLICK!") and select "Run as Administrator" if there are problems. I didn't have any, but I am logged on as Administrator of my machine and only have one logon account for this machine. Please gimme a thumbs up by clicking the "this helped me out" button below!