IrDA "working properly" but doesn't work at all

[Guest]

I have WinXP Home on a laptop with an internal IrDA port... it used to work
fine (too fine, actually..whenever my Palm was anywhere near the computer the
Wireless Link would spring to life), and now it's completely disabled.
Device Manager reports that "Built-in Infrared Device" is enabled and
"working properly", yet it is utterly unfunctional; no application can access
it and testing the port with an external device reports "no IrDA devices in
range".
Of course, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling this standard WinXP IR
driver several times.

 

[Chuck]

This might be a long shot--
Check the BIOS settings for the IRDA port.

 

[Guest]

I wish... it's enabled in the BIOS.

 

[Guest]

Those pieces of the IrDA support are provided by a user-mode service and not
by the hardware or network protocol drivers. So make sure that the
"Infrared Monitor" (aka irmon) is running

 

[Guest]

irmon is running. Stopping and restarting it didn't make a difference either.

 

[Chuck]

The IR LED in the laptop may not be working.
The reason I mentioned the BIOS is that my HP laptop has other options
besides IRDA enable/disable.
(It was a real pain to get to work with my Nokia cellphones.)
The cell phones can function as a cell system based modem when connected to
the laptop via IR or a special purpose cable.
(The cable works much better than the IR connection.)

 

[Guest]

There's always the option of it being a hardware failure, of course it's the
last thing I wanna assume. It also used to work great in the past. I don't
suppose you know any DOS IR testing software?
I had installed an IrCOMM driver called IrCOMM2k, which reroutes the IR port
to a virtual serial port - I had made a PC IrDA interact with a consumer
remote control in the past - but not this time. I did a clean uninstall, but
probably since then it stopped working.
I know the extra options you're talking about, but my Presario X1050 BIOS is
the weirdest I've seen, and nothing besides enable/disable.
IrDA is supposed to be so simple, I'd hate to reinstall the OS / buy a
cable. Grrr.