Code

The USB board never shows up

Charge-only cables and the wrong port are the usual cause. The copilot cannot see your USB port.

The problem

Arduino IDE’s Port menu is grey, empty, or unchanged after you plug the board in. Upload never starts.

Charge-only cable: A USB cable that supplies power but has no data wires. The board lights up and still never appears as a port.

1
Look at the board. If no LED is on, the cable or USB socket is not powering it. Try another socket, including the rear ports on a desktop.
2
If the board lights up but no port appears, swap the cable for one you know transfers files. This was a recurring QA miss on Windows laptops.
3
On Windows, open Device Manager and see if an unknown serial device appears when you plug in. If it does, install the CH340 or official Arduino USB driver that matches your board clone.
4
Close other copies of the IDE, serial monitors, and chat tools that might hold the port. Unplug, wait five seconds, plug in, then pick the new port.
5
If you are on a school machine without driver install rights, that is a prep item for the facilitator, not something to fix mid-session. See the facilitator guide.

If you walked the steps and the mechanism still does not move, write to us. This is the fallback, not the first stop.