Bluetooth COM ports taking up resources for COM1 and Secondary IDE controller

​ Hi all, ​

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​ I recently had to reinstall my Dell Bluetooth software on an Inspiron 8500. The computer has BIOS version A06 and is running Windows XP Pro SP 2. ​

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​ The reinstall itself and re-pairing of the devices went fine. However, my cell phone and PDA (which both use a COM port to connect) have not been assigned COM ports 12 and 14. Previously, they were 9 and 10 (or so). It seems to me that with every re-pair or re-install of the Bluetooth software, the assigned COM port number keeps increasing, but that old COM ports are not actually deleted. ​

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​ After pairing the devices, I opened up Device Manager, and noticed that my COM1 (physical port) and Secondary IDE controller had the yellow exclamation mark icons. Both devices fail to start because of a lack of resources. ​

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​ I am fairly certain this happened after reinstalling the Bluetooth software. ​

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​ Is there a way to force the Bluetooth software to pick a specific COM port for a device (in the properties, there is a dropdown list, but for each device, only one COM port is listed)? Is there a way to forcefully remove old COM Ports and free up the resources (these COM ports are not listed in Device Manager...) ​

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​ Thanks, ​

​ ​

​ Sven. ​