Serial Port Comm 1

[Strat]

I'm having this weird problem with my local port or comm 1. I have a Belkin Switch Box hooked into my 9 pin serial port, I run a cradle for a palm pilot and communicate with my routers OS using hypertermial on com 1 serial port. I also use to communicate with my digital camera using this switch box, but now have a 6 in 1 floppy that elimates using that method of communicating with the camera.

When I try to to communicate with the palm or with hyperterminal, I get this screen saying the port is being used and the device will open the port when it becomes available,,, Hmmmmm. Now I've tried just hooking up cradle for the palm pilot directly into the serial port on the mobo nothing else is connected... I have no modem in the rig.

I bring up the software for the computer to communicate with the palm and I get the same screen saying the port is being used.. Nothing there to use it unless something is running in the background the could be using this comm port. When I try communicating with my router using hyperterminal I get the same thing, this screen says the port is being used by another telephony device.....hmmmm,

I disconnected the cable the routers uses to communicate with the computer and when I fire up the software for the palm to communicate with the computer I get the same thing.

What could be possibly using this port, or is there something in Win XP pro that I need to set or tweak to solve this problem..

Thanks All In Advance

Strat

Sys Specs
Asus A7N8X Delux
AMD XP 3000+Barton
Corsair XMS 512 twin PC3700 Dual Channel
Radeon 9800 Pro
Enermax PS 433
WinXP Pro
Bios Ver 1006

[meese]

You should go to the device manager and check the resources used by each device and see if anything is using COM1.

[Strat]

I've checked everything in the device mgr. When I open up the properties for comm 1 under port settings it shows a pull down menu with a bunch of com ports,,, now I noticed it said that com 2 was in use, hmmmm I have com 2 disabled in the bios. I know com 1 an com 2 use the same irq so this might be the problem, but what the heck is using com 2...... I'll just keep digging....

[meese]

COM1 and COM2 don't use the same IRQ. The default IRQ for COM1 is 4 and COM2 is 3.

[muno]

Something is reserving the port.
Stop/disable any program/service that used the com1 port and try again.
-M

[Strat]

Ok finally got this problem solved, everything is communicating just fine now. I found in win xp pro that there is a Remote Desktop connection under programs access. A window will pop up and from there click on options, you'll see a tab that says local resources, click that and make sure the serial port box at the bottom of the window is unchecked. Everything works just fine now,, thanks for all the help and replies on this problem,,,,,hope this helps anyone else that might be having problems communicating with PDA's, hyperterminal, cameras etc that use a serial port connection Com 1.