HELP - DUPLICATE COM & LPT PORTS

[Fred Goldberg]

If I check the properties of any printer (START/Settings/Printers and
Faxes) and click on PORTS I see 2 each of all the following ports: COM1,
COM2 COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3 and FILE. FILE may or may not be related
to the problem. Under Device Manager, everything looks normal (no dups).

This is causing a problem with my "Intuit Internal Printer" (a PDF printer)
so that it will no longer work. It uses a COM1 setting. I believe the
problem started when I installed the ZAN Image Printer (comverts an html
file to a tiff file).

I have uninstalled the ZAN Image Printer and Adobe Acrobat and deleted the
Intuit Internal Printer followed by running both Symantec's WinDoctor and
Advanced System Optimizer's Registry Cleaner. I also deleted the COM and
LPT ports with Device Manager and rebooted.

The duplicate ports reappeared. Other than reinstalling Windows (Gee - I
hope not), I don't have any clue as to a resolution. I suspect a registry
issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Fred

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Of course, System Restore is the preferred way to remove those registry entries. If that is not possible, you would need to locate
the place the install added the ports, and hack them out. Not a thing I would try on a vital system, but you could export a file and
restore on failure.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\SERIALCOMM