I only see COM1 for a serial port, and it doesn't work

In Windows, COM1 and COM2 are reserved for system ports, which means that Sparki is never on COM1 or COM2. If you only see these ports, that means that Sparki is not being properly detected, or that a program has been uploaded to Sparki that has crashed it.

Try the following:

1. Make sure the USB cable is plugged in firmly
2. Make sure the drivers are installed. They should be installed when you install SparkiDuino or miniBloq, but you can also find the dedicated driver installer on the downloads page:
   http://arcbotics.com/downloads
3. Try doing a manual upload. This will help in case a previously uploaded program is crashing Sparki:
   http://arcbotics.com/lessons/manual-upload/