whats hogging my com port - and IRQ 12 question..

[guydewdney]

got a couple of Q's for you pooter gurus..

1) somthing is hogging all three of my com ports - how do i find out what it is? i have a origin B2 and the first time i connected it it was fine - now it isnt - it cant see it.. I tried installing some touch screen software on the pc (using the com port) - i assumed it was this that was hogging it - but no - cos I have uninstalled said s/w.. Have tried all three com ports to no avail. No UPS either (aparantly a comon problem)

2) wrt the touch screen - i want to connect it to mt GF's laptop. The s/w asks to make sure that IRQ 12 is free for the touchscreen - thus one must unplug the mouse - but you cant - its a laptop.... so how can I change the IRQ of the inbuilt mousepad? or disable it? (it greys out the 'use/disable this device' option in h/w manager) if this is impossible - then any suggestions? serial -> usb connector? if this all fails - then its going to be a bespoke pooter (for the campervan) to play CD/MP3/DVD/GPS/ download digicamera pics...

 

[WLeg]

worth a look in the bios.....???

 

[scotth_uk]

Do you have any ipaq/palm software that may be watching the com port? I used to find that a lot of people didn't uncheck the COM options in the activesync/hotsync when using USB.

Take a look in device manager to ensure that the COM ports all look healthy and happy too. Be cautions of how many COM ports you have. For some reason modern additional COM ports seem to install themselves as stupidly high numbers.

In the olden days... -)) a common problem was shared IRQs between pairs of ports. i.e. COM1 and COM3 would share an IRQ (4) as would COM2 and COM4 (3). Couple of things trying to access the same IRQ used to produce interesting results. Was generally fixed in Win2k and WinXP, but I have still seen issues.

 

[scotth_uk]

Do you have any ipaq/palm software that may be watching the com port? I used to find that a lot of people didn't uncheck the COM options in the activesync/hotsync when using USB.

Take a look in device manager to ensure that the COM ports all look healthy and happy too. Be cautions of how many COM ports you have. For some reason modern additional COM ports seem to install themselves as stupidly high numbers.

In the olden days... -)) a common problem was shared IRQs between pairs of ports. i.e. COM1 and COM3 would share an IRQ (4) as would COM2 and COM4 (3). Couple of things trying to access the same IRQ used to produce interesting results. Was generally fixed in Win2k and WinXP, but I have still seen issues.