Serial Ports Inactive

[Will]

On a Windows 2000 Server, I cannot see any incoming activity on
any serial port. Using the Sysinternals Portmon utility, I do
not see any traffic on a serial port when a device known to
generate serial traffic is attached. The same setup on other
computers generates traffic. The device in question sends out
serial traffic regardless of whether it is attached to a computer
or not, and it does not synchronize its data with the computer
before sending.

Sysinternal's Portmon will show activity on the serial port at
the API level, so no synchronization is required based on baud,
stop bits, etc, in order to see activity of the devices attached
to each port.

I am stumped by this one. I don't know where to even begin.
Something appears to have corrupted serial communications on this
machine.

 

[Thomas Lutz]

The Sysinternals Portmon software can only report serial
communications activity if some software has the serial port open.
If no other software has the port open then the PortMon software will
not show you anything. Plugging the device into the serial port and
sending data will not register anything in PortMon until you use a
program like Hyperterminal or some other serial I/O software to open
the port.
You can download several good tools that will help you "see" the data
that is being sent into the port at the following web page:

http://www.taltech.com/freesoftware/fs_sw.htm

I would recommend that you look at the free "COMDEBUG" program on the
above page.