I am trying to get COM2 working on a single COM port box, I have hooked up the modem to COM1 which works fine, hooked up the serial cable to COM2 (PCI card) I have had a look in the BIOS but cannot see anywhere to install/activate COM2. I have installed a PCI serial card using the following file setio.exe which came with the card I have add the following line to the AUTOEXEC.BAT: C:\setio.exe /u2:03F8 Do I have to add anything to the CONFIG.SYS Have I added the correct syntax to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file Basiclly I cannot see how to get the machine to point to the PCI Card and use this as COM2 Any help would be massively appreciated Regards Thommo56

I'm not sure of the switches you use with the command. I assume you have instructions on setting it up. There may be other SETIO.exe files. I found this: http://www.quickpad.com/setio.htm which doesn't show the U2 switch so it's probably a different file. You say you've set the modem up at com1. I assume that's an external modem connected by cable to the com1 port? If not you've set the modem up wrong. If it's an internal modem it needs com and IRQ settings different from the on-board port. If the 03F8 in the setio line is the address for the com2 you're trying to set up then make sure com1 is not already on that address. 03F8 is the default for com1. Of course you should be able to change that in cmos/bios setup. Just make sure your com1 is NOT 03F8 if you want your com2 to be there. The default for com2 is 02F8. Also, you're calling SETIO.exe from the root directory on the C: drive. Make sure the file is actually located there. Otherwise it won't run.

Almost all pci cards are plug and play. Some isa with pci may have issues. Not sure you would need to set anything else on more modern machines. Might be that the order of cards needs to be moved or bios reset pci. Most programs do not act to com2. Might use modem to diag it. Use at commands. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10