I assume this is the old DMC-1 program that’s associated with IMS on an “eBay” laptop. There are a lot of things that can keep that program from connecting. First you have to have a real 9 pin serial port on the laptop, no USB adapters. Then the switch to 485 and the comm port should say ACPI in device manager. And ya, Orange cable. The program only works up to Windows 7 but was never intended to work on anything but XP. Make sure the program is set to comm 1 for your native serial port. I’ve seen this program patched in a way that allows it to open but never connect like you’re describing and when I got it working on Windows 7 it would open and not connect until you clicked faults. Then the faults would show up and you could go back to status and everything worked.