Disable Plug and Play?

[Terry Sorensen]

Plug and Play insists that my add-on serial ports are connected to Mouse(s)
when in fact they are connected to external hardware that I wish to
communicate with via programs, not system drivers. Hardware is continuously
sending data in via serial connection waiting for computer to acknowledge.
Plug and PLay then installs Mouse Drivers on these COM ports!

Once I get system properly configured by booting up with external harware
disconnected, can I disable Plug and Play (W2K Pro) to keep it from
installing mouse drivers on serial ports if/when system is re-booted?

 

[Rick]

Plug and Play insists that my add-on serial ports are connected to Mouse(s)
when in fact they are connected to external hardware that I wish to
communicate with via programs, not system drivers. Hardware is continuously
sending data in via serial connection waiting for computer to acknowledge.
Plug and PLay then installs Mouse Drivers on these COM ports!

Once I get system properly configured by booting up with external harware
disconnected, can I disable Plug and Play (W2K Pro) to keep it from
installing mouse drivers on serial ports if/when system is re-booted?

Absolutely not. Disabling PNP is one of the fastest, most efficient
ways to completely hose a Win2K system. It won't boot at all.

What you can do is, assuming you're using a PS/2 mouse, AND
your boot volume is FAT/FAT32 and not NTFS, boot off a
Win98 DOS floppy, go into \winnt\system32\drivers and rename
sermouse.sys. Win2K will no longer be able to autoinstall a
mouse driver for the COM ports, even though you'll have to
deal with seeing a few error messages every time you boot.

Rick

 

[Rick]

Absolutely not. Disabling PNP is one of the fastest, most efficient
ways to completely hose a Win2K system. It won't boot at all.

What you can do is, assuming you're using a PS/2 mouse, AND
your boot volume is FAT/FAT32 and not NTFS, boot off a
Win98 DOS floppy, go into \winnt\system32\drivers and rename
sermouse.sys. Win2K will no longer be able to autoinstall a
mouse driver for the COM ports, even though you'll have to
deal with seeing a few error messages every time you boot.

Sorry, meant to add you might also need to rename the same
file (sermouse.sys) in \winnt\system32\dllcache.

Rick

 

[Steve Parry [MVP]]

Plug and Play insists that my add-on serial ports are connected to
Mouse(s) when in fact they are connected to external hardware that I
wish to communicate with via programs, not system drivers. Hardware
is continuously sending data in via serial connection waiting for
computer to acknowledge. Plug and PLay then installs Mouse Drivers on
these COM ports!

Once I get system properly configured by booting up with external
harware disconnected, can I disable Plug and Play (W2K Pro) to keep
it from installing mouse drivers on serial ports if/when system is
re-booted?

not sure if this will work but it was a workaround for NT4 (and
as W2K is NT based it may help)

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;131976

 

[Terry Sorensen]

Thanks Rick. At least now I know not to try and disable Plug and Play!
Unfortunately, I am dealing with an NTFS partition.

 

[Terry Sorensen]

Rick, are you saying FAT32 only so that I can boot from the floppy without
plug and play doing its thing to allow me to rename sermouse.sys? Would it
work if I rename sermouse.sys right now while the system is configured the
way I want it configured and allow the system to reboot from the hard drive
whenever a reboot is necessary?
Or is it necessary that all reboots be from the floppy after the rename is
done? Thanks for the help.

 

[Rick]

If you try and rename sermouse.sys while Win2k is running,
Windows File Protection will kick in and replace it with the
copy in \winnt\system32\dllcache.

There's yet another problem, because sermouse.sys is part of
Win2k's main driver cabinet in C:\WINNT\Driver Cache\i386.
Yet another source Windows has to autoinstall the driver.

Have you tried the other poster's suggestion, of simply modifying
boot.ini and adding the /noserialmice switch?
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q131/9/76.asp

Rick