How do I delete spurious COM ports?

[Peter]

This would have been easy in win2000.

I have the old problem with com ports which are "in use" but I can't
find what is reserving them.

This is winXP SP2 tablet version.

I have com1,2,3 on the motherboard, com3 is "in use" but I can't see
what is using it. It doesn't matter though.

Then I have com4 which is an USB-serial converter - OK

Then I have com5 which is a PCMCIA GPRS modem - OK

Then I install a TDK bluetooth adaptor for communicating with a GPS.
Initially this correctly appeared as com6. However, because it is one
of these stupid bluetooth products that don't contain a unique ID, it
reinstalls itself on a new com port every time it is inserted into a
different port on a hub, so now I have "in use" ports up to com14!!

I am trying to get this TDK thing back onto com6. I can go into its
config and force it to go to com6, which appears to work, but Windows
shows various dire warnings about system stability. It seems to work
fine, but I would prefer to remove these "in use" ports and reinstall.

Under win2k, one could do this in CP using the "add/remove hardware"
function, and if one enabled the display of all hidden devices one
could see the lot and remove them. In XP, one can only ADD hardware.

An uninstall of the TDK software doesn't remove these mysterious
ports... and TDK don't reply to emails....

The TDK software includes many bluetooth services e.g. networking
which I don't need and I suspect some of these are creating the extra
com ports too.

I would really appreciate any suggestions.


Peter.

 

[OShah]

This would have been easy in win2000.

I have the old problem with com ports which are "in use" but I can't
find what is reserving them.

This is winXP SP2 tablet version.

I have com1,2,3 on the motherboard, com3 is "in use" but I can't see
what is using it. It doesn't matter though.

Then I have com4 which is an USB-serial converter - OK

Then I have com5 which is a PCMCIA GPRS modem - OK

Then I install a TDK bluetooth adaptor for communicating with a GPS.
Initially this correctly appeared as com6. However, because it is one
of these stupid bluetooth products that don't contain a unique ID, it
reinstalls itself on a new com port every time it is inserted into a
different port on a hub, so now I have "in use" ports up to com14!!

I am trying to get this TDK thing back onto com6. I can go into its
config and force it to go to com6, which appears to work, but Windows
shows various dire warnings about system stability. It seems to work
fine, but I would prefer to remove these "in use" ports and reinstall.

Under win2k, one could do this in CP using the "add/remove hardware"
function, and if one enabled the display of all hidden devices one
could see the lot and remove them. In XP, one can only ADD hardware.

An uninstall of the TDK software doesn't remove these mysterious
ports... and TDK don't reply to emails....

The TDK software includes many bluetooth services e.g. networking
which I don't need and I suspect some of these are creating the extra
com ports too.

I would really appreciate any suggestions.


Peter.

set this system environment variable, and then the hidden devices will
work the way it did in Win2000:

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1

Acording to reports, you can also start in safe mode to delete the hidden
devices.

If you are using bluetooth drivers based on the Widcomm/Broadcom stack,
then having COM ports up to COM14 is normal.


--
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oshah [shexec32]
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Error Reporting -> Choose Programs
-> Do not report errors for these programs:

Acrobat.exe
waol.exe

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[Si Ballenger]

You might look at the below site:

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/xptip.asp