From this step onward make sure your ESP8266-12E is securely connected to your computer.

I have a Windows 7.0 laptop that I used to test and program the ESP8266-12E. When I first hooked the ESP8266-12E to the computer the “New device found - installing drivers” message showed up. By default Windows could not find the drivers and kept on looking and looking and looking. I killed that search!

To install the drivers, open the Window's Control Panel and clicked on the Device Manager. There you will find the USB controller that exists on your ESP8266-12E board. It is the CP120x USB to UART Bridge Controller chip. Right click on the CP120x USB Composite Controller (it has a tiny yellow caution symbol) under Other Devices.

I googled “CP1201 USB to UART drivers” and found the drivers here. This web page also has good instructions on how to install the drivers.

Download the zip file cp210x44.zip and unzip it. Your Windows drivers are in the YourDownloadDir/cp210x44/x86 directory. To install the drivers right click on the “CP120x USB Composite Controller” line in your Device Manager and in the popup select “Update Driver Software…” and take it from there on. From here on the process to install the USB to UART drivers is obvious.

Once the drivers are properly installed the caution symbol will disappear and the “CP120x USB Composite Controller” entry would have moved under “Universal Serial Bus Controllers” and also “Ports (COM & LPT)”. Your driver is installed!!!