Hello.

I have a bit of a stumper I was hoping someone could give me a hand with. Does anyone know where I can check to see what devices are assigned to a COM port or if there is a way I can force the device that has been assigned to COM2 to be changed to COM1?

Here's the scenario:
A couple of months ago I installed a new US Robotics internal faxmodem card into a Compaq Presario running Windows 98. Everything was smooth--the operating system recognized the new hardware, assigned it to COM1 and it was off and running. About a month passed during which time the modem was not used. Now, when I start up the machine, the modem is assigned to COM2, however, the PC doesn't really have a COM2. I have looked in the device manager and as far as I can tell I can't see anything else that is taking up the space in COM1. I know for a fact that AOL 4.0 and 5.0 had been un-installed from the machine since the modem last worked, so I recently reinstalled 5.0, but still no luck. I'm trying to find out first if there is something that is taking up COM1 which I might be able to remove so that the O/S can recognize the device and assign it properly at startup. If that's not the problem, my second step is finding a way to force it to use COM1 even though the O/S keeps assigning it to COM2.

Sorry this got a bit lengthy. I'd appreciate any help you can give.

Thanks!

In Control Panel if you double click the Modems icon you should see your modem listed. Highlight it and click Properties and you'll see a bar at the top with the current COM port listed. Click the arrow to the right and click the COM Port you want to use. CLick OK and close, should be off and running again.

This sounds like one of the little glitches AOhelL causes. I've had to actually reinstall Windows after trying to uninstall AOL. I can't think of anything worse to do to your computer than installing AOL or maybe Netscape. Both make changes to the registry that they do not undo when uninstalling.

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

Here in the UK, AOL provides better software than many of the local 'free' ISPs .... but I have not had to remove it as I like it. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

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Nigel Smith

A double AMEN to Pete's post! 8 out of 10 computers that come into my shop with Internet related problems use AOL and are disgusted with it. Give me a local straight up dial-up networking ISP with no frills any time over AOL, MSN, Prodigy or Compuserve. AOL 6.0 started out as a disaster and still can be one.

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"I didn't have a relationship with that OS...Win ME."