I have a program with a special game controler that is usb and there tech support says it has to be on com1. Whcih makes no sence to me as com1 and usb don't go tegether, anyway, sisoft says somethin is using my com1. how do I find out what is using com1. I have nothing plugged into the serial ports. com1 is on IRQ 4, nothing else shows it is on IRQ 4. When I look in device manager it says it is working fine, but nothing tells me what the heck is using it, the only thing I know is that SiSoft says it is in use, and com 2 is not. I do not have anythng hooked up to any paralel ports or usb ports either.

Usually the only things using a com port are a serial mouse or modem. You can go to 'modems' in control panel to see if your modem is at com1.

It is a little misleading, but yes COM1 has been assigned IRQ4 etctec therefore it is "unavailable" to other hardware. In BIOS you should be able to DISABLE COMM Ports, this would make IRQ4 available and then in Windows Device Manager you probably would need to manually assign the USB Device the correct IRQ/Address settings.