COM1 always busy after reboot

[benedictheal]

My COM1 port is appears busy, and is therefore not available to other programs. Using 'manage', it always shows up as 'busy'. If I disable it, reboot, and re-enable, I can use it, so the port itself must be ok.

Should I assume that some program is grabbing it at startup? Is there any way of finding which program? Could it be anything else? I don't have anything obvious running like a fax program.

Thanks,
Benedict

 

[doest]

I ahve had this problem once after installing a APC UPS.
Go to the power options in the control panel and click on the last tab which UPS and see if some power device took over control om COM1. You can stop it there.

 

[benedictheal]

Thanks for comment - I think you may be on to something.

The help file about installing UPS mentions assigning a port to it, so that may be the problem.

I've discovered that in my Power Options, I have neither an APM tab nor a UPS tab, whereas on my other W2K machine which doesn't have this problem, I have both tabs.

The difficulty now is that, according to the help file, to uninstall UPS I need the UPS tab, which I don't have! There must be some other way to uninstall it. Any ideas.

 

[doest]

No I am sorry I can help with the missing tab, but the Win 2K machines I have worked on do have the UPS tab.