Update: I have not tested this on Windows 8, but it should work. If anyone does this on Windows 8 (i don’t have a Windows 8 machine laying around), please leave a comment to verify if it works or not.
Yes, this post is about Windows!
I had a problem yesterday, and thought I should post my solution since I had a hard time getting it to work and it might help others.
I have a D-link DGS-3324SR rack switch for my servers, and it had some random IP address on the configuration interface that I was not able to find, and I needed to get into the switch to configure some vlans.
I thought “That’s easy, just connect to the console port and thats it”, but then i came home to notice that none of my computers have a serial (RS323) port!
I then found a serial (RS323) to USB converter at work, the Belkin F5U103V and borrowed it for the day, but when i got home and plugged it into a Windows 7 64Bit laptop I noticed that there was no driver found for the device.

After hours of googling around, I found something useful! and now i am going to share it with you. Maybe you need it and maybe you don’t, but this post is something worth having on the web since Belkin is not making any new drivers for the Belkin F5U103V device anymore!

Getting Belkin F5U103V to work on Windows 7 64Bit

You don’t need much to get this device going, but what you need is hard to find! That’s why i have uploaded a copy here

Installing the driver

Just download the driver above, and run the setup file as administrator.

Reboot the computer

Yes, this is very important!! so do it.
I did not do it at first, and was not able to use the device before I did.
When the computer is back up and running, plug in the Belkin USB to serial converter.
You now have the Belkin F5U103V working in Windows 7 64Bit.
The rest of this post, is how to connect to the D-link DGS-3324 switch using Putty and configuring the IP address on the switch management interface, if you don’t need this you might not be interested in reading the rest.

Download Putty

In Windows i use Putty to connect using telnet, ssh, serial or any other connection like that.
It’s free, portable and pretty good if you ask me.
You can download Putty here

Putty settings

My D-link DGS-3324SR switch uses 115200 baud rate, which i found by looking into the manual.
This number might be different on other switches or network equipment, and if you don’t have the manual by hand and can’t find it on google, you can always just try the different settings (Choosing the wrong one, won’t damage the equipment)
My Belkin F5U103V got the com port number 8 (com8), and that is what I am going to connect to in putty.
First connect the serial cable to the switch.
Open putty, and tick “serial” and write com8 instead of com1 in the port.
Now, go to the left menu, and the option called “Serial” under “Connection” and set the setting like in the picture below for this switch:

Now press “Open” to the left of “Cancel” and that’s it. the “Console” light on the switch should now be green and you got a terminal in putty where you can login and start configuring your switch.
See this post on how to configure a static IP address for the D-link DGS-3324SR rack switch.