I'm trying to drive a 15 year old pen 0lotter with my Win2K laptop. I've got an
issue with my COM ports. Something is holding on to COM1. A friend advised
using COM2, but I don't have a COM2. Only COM1 and COM4. I can't add another
COM port.
Thinking the driver for the built in modem was holding on to COM1, I deleted
the modem driver, and now the COM port is running amok and the system won't
hibernate. Error when attempting hibernation: "The device driver for the 'Communication Port (COM1)' device
is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications
and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver."
Previously, the system hibernated on demand.
Entering this string: MODE COM1:9600,N,8,1,P
into a DOS prompt yields the response: "Status for device COM1:" with the
settings on the next dozen or so lines. I saw this for the first time on my most recent attempt to plot a drawing.
I only recieved this after deleting the modem driver and setting my plotter
driver to use LPT1 (normally set to COM1).
Entering the string: ECHO IN;SP1;PA0,0;PD1000,1000;SP0;PG;>COM1
yiels the result:
"The system cannon write to the specified device." It's supposed to draw a diagonal line.
There may be a wiring issue here. I have the pinout for the serial cable, and
it's not a straight pass through cable. This pinout, and the above modem
strings were taken from a very deep link at hp.com.
Note: The laptop was born with Win98SE, an I upgrade to Win2KPro shortly after
I recieved it. I've been told never upgrade, but I did an haven't any problems
'til now.
Laptop: Dell Inspiron 7500 600MHz PentiumIII with 12GB HD and 128MB RAM running Win2K Pro v5.00.2195 SP1.
