SUMMARY: Install FortiExplorerSetup.msi to administrate your old serial-portless Fortigate over USB. Fortinet, a manufacturer of firewalls and other network equipment, once provided this software package as a way to quickly configure new devices. They discontinued it several years ago. Lower-end models of Fortigate, e.g. the 60D, do not have any native serial port, only a mini-USB port. This does not use a standard driver; it appears to be totally proprietary, and may not be a serial port at all. Even with the proprietary drivers installed, no COM port seems to be created in Windows for the device (although the fortiexplorer software sometimes refers to the device as COM8, this doesn't seem to be usable by PuTTY.) There is, therefore, no way to console in to these devices other than to install FortiExplorer, which is no longer available on Fortinet's website at all. I located an old hard link to a download, which I was able to get from Archive. Even that, however, was actually a utility that downloads the latest installer - attached here for posterity as FortiExplorer_2.2.1046.exe . This still works as of 3/12/2019, but I expect it will stop working someday. The other file, FortiExplorerSetup.msi , is the actual installer that the downloader retrieves, and it appears to be a totally self container package you can install without any network connection. I was able to install the driver on Windows 10 x64, it recognized my Fortigate device, and I was able to reach the console.
Tags: network, fortinet, fortigate, firewall