Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
12 Posts
0
13448
Dell 2400 serial port dead?
Hi, everyone...
I have a Dell 2400 that is used to display my home weather station, and it also feeds the station data to Weather Underground. The weather display/feed software gets it's data from the weather station via a serial interface.
A few days ago, after rebooting the system after downloading some critical MS updates, the weather software displayed a message that it "Could not open comm port". I checked to make sure the software was set for the correct com port (com 1) and it was. I went into device manager and checked that something didn't happen to the com port, and it showed com 1 was still there. I plugged some other serial devices into the com port and rebooted each time, and nada.
I contacted Dell tech support on-line, and over the course of an hour or so, the tech had me check a myriad of things, and conduct some tests. We made sure the com port was still active in the bios (it was) . We forced it to be com 1 (instead of "auto" ). We rebooted into the diagnostic partition, and checked the com port, and it said it was good. We then tried to test it via Hyperterminal, and thats where things went south. Hyperterminal said the port was in use. It wasn't...nothing was plugged into it, and the modem is on com 3. The tech decided I needed a new motherboard (the one time an extended warranty has actually paid off), and two days later, a technician was at the house with new MB. He changed out the new MB, and when we rebooted the computer, the same error message came up. Obviously it doesn't appear that the original serial port/MB was bad, because we shouldn't have the same message problem again. I told the technician that the problem arose after doing a MS Update, and he suggested that there may have been a problem with one of the updates. He suggested going into system recovery and restoring to a previous time. We went back about 2 weeks. The system did it's thing, and after that, still end up with the same problem. Now I'm stumped.
I think that this problem is actually in the OS. I think that I need to go into device manager, and deleted the serial port, reboot the computer and let WinXP find it again. I'm not sure that'll work, but I can't think f anything else. Anyone have any suggestions?
All help greatly appreciated.
I have a Dell 2400 that is used to display my home weather station, and it also feeds the station data to Weather Underground. The weather display/feed software gets it's data from the weather station via a serial interface.
A few days ago, after rebooting the system after downloading some critical MS updates, the weather software displayed a message that it "Could not open comm port". I checked to make sure the software was set for the correct com port (com 1) and it was. I went into device manager and checked that something didn't happen to the com port, and it showed com 1 was still there. I plugged some other serial devices into the com port and rebooted each time, and nada.
I contacted Dell tech support on-line, and over the course of an hour or so, the tech had me check a myriad of things, and conduct some tests. We made sure the com port was still active in the bios (it was) . We forced it to be com 1 (instead of "auto" ). We rebooted into the diagnostic partition, and checked the com port, and it said it was good. We then tried to test it via Hyperterminal, and thats where things went south. Hyperterminal said the port was in use. It wasn't...nothing was plugged into it, and the modem is on com 3. The tech decided I needed a new motherboard (the one time an extended warranty has actually paid off), and two days later, a technician was at the house with new MB. He changed out the new MB, and when we rebooted the computer, the same error message came up. Obviously it doesn't appear that the original serial port/MB was bad, because we shouldn't have the same message problem again. I told the technician that the problem arose after doing a MS Update, and he suggested that there may have been a problem with one of the updates. He suggested going into system recovery and restoring to a previous time. We went back about 2 weeks. The system did it's thing, and after that, still end up with the same problem. Now I'm stumped.
I think that this problem is actually in the OS. I think that I need to go into device manager, and deleted the serial port, reboot the computer and let WinXP find it again. I'm not sure that'll work, but I can't think f anything else. Anyone have any suggestions?
All help greatly appreciated.
Message Edited by Bob F. on 11-18-200606:34 PM
Message Edited by Bob F. on 11-18-200606:34 PM
dbramlet
2.2K Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 22:00
dbramlet
2.2K Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 22:00
rickmktg
11.9K Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 22:00
Bob F.
12 Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 22:00
There is only 1 com port. The ports are integrated to the board, so no cables. When the tech changed out the MB, we did make sure that the port was enabled in the bios.
Bob F.
12 Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 22:00
Thanks for the suggestions. I just checked the port in control panel, and it shows that it is set for the correct IRQ and I/Q range.
Bob F.
12 Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 23:00
dbramlet
2.2K Posts
0
November 18th, 2006 23:00
Bob F.
12 Posts
0
November 19th, 2006 10:00
rickmktg
11.9K Posts
0
November 20th, 2006 01:00