[hoag]

Be careful with the usb to serial adapters. Last year at the Finger Lakes regional, my team was trying to figure out why another team couldn't download code. It turns out that their new usb adapter was not working as it should, causing the robot controller to malfunction. (Innovation First had to give them a new controller)

One of the adults on the team brought in his Keyspan brand adapter. It's fairly expensive, but it has a lot of utilities. I've had the Cables to Go brand for the past 2 years, and it's been great. (It's been dropped in the snow and run over by the robot several times and still works)

Also, check in the Device Manager under ports to see if the serial port is set at 115200 bits per second.

You could also try moving to a desktop computer that has a serial port on board and downloading from that to see how long it takes.