My infrared monitor says it operates on LPT 3 and COM 4, but there is an internal error when I try to run infrared transfer. Mode command in Dos shows only COM1, COM2, LPT1, 2, and 3 exist on the system. Mode COM4 gives an invalid entry error in DOS. COM 4 is not listed anywhere in Compaq Diagnostics but I assume the virtual infrared COM port in Device Manager refers to it, and COM4 is shown under Modems Properties with no associated device. However when I click on ‘More Info’ in Modems Properties- COM 4 is greyed out and has the following entries for interrupt-0, address-0, uart-BLANK! COM4 is recognized in some fashion by Hyperterminal. Could my infrared initialization error mean that COM4 is unconfigured or unsupported?

Start at bios. Is this a IR device that shipped with the computer or an add on card? "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

The infrared device shipped with the computer as an internal. I believe it is listed as a NDIS Miniport 4.0 Bye the bye, it is not established that IR has ever been sucessfully tested on this computer- since it was new. It started life as Windows 98, tnen 98SE, all the way through telnet update. There is a working modem on COM2 (3430-3437), and no IRQ conflicts. But the I/O assignments to the ports are not intuitive, for example the classic 2E8-2EF (COM4) is not used at all on the machine and 3E8-3EF(normally COM2) is assigned to the Ircc Infrared communication controller as is 100-107. It is a mess, but COM4 which has no assigned settings may remain the main question since I can find no IRQ or DMA conflicts.

Sorry, I forgot to add that serial, parallel, and infrared ports are enabled in bios

Repost this in dos maybe. I'd say re-assign bios IRQ's or configure dos differently?? "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

I think you may be right. I found strange discrepancies with debug and mode command in DOS. For example, COM4 is an illegal device with address 00 00 and the address for the Infrared Device is shown under COM3 (which is also an illegal device!) instead of COM4. Something very screwy here. Thanks.