Opening COM-port to adapter fails often

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What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Connect the adapter to PC
2. Wait that it appears to COM-ports in System Management control panel
3. Attempt to open the COM-port to device e.g. with a terminal program

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

The COM-port should open successfully, but quite often it takes several 
restarts of the adapter and some Voodoo to make a successful port opening. It 
helps to plug the adapter AND the joystick's power chord off and wait for a 
while before reconnecting. But even that does not always succeed.

The COM-port DOES always appear to Windows when connecting the device, but 
actually opening that port fails quite often. If it can be opened once, it can 
always be reopened. It is that first open that is the issue.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by tlo...@gmail.com on 8 Jan 2014 at 1:07