How to find what program is in control of your serial port?

[RadarRay]

I am trying to communicate with some control devices using the serial port on a laptop running Win2000. I get an error message which says the problem is some other program is already in control of the serial port. Does anyone know of a program which can be run that will tell me what program is in control? I have tried MSconfig and processes under the Task manager but the cryptic names have been of little use.

 

[hotrodtod]

Have you looked under Device Manager? If not do so, but you will need to get into more depth. Click on the ports you are trying to figure out and look under resources. It will tell you if there are conflicts and what IRQ it is using. You may have to change this in your BIOS.

 

[nbucska]

RR:
Why in the world do you use WINDOWS? Under DOS this --
and a lot of other tasks -- would be simple...

<nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[RadarRay]

I chose Windows because Rockwell chose windows. In fact I think it is one of the Rockwell packages that is grabbing the port. The other package is also written by someone else to control their product.

Hotrod, thanks for the tip. If I get access to the guys computer that actually has this problem, I will try that.

I got around this issue by using a USB to Serial converter. It is assigned ports 3 and 4, so there is no conflict.

 

[hotrodtod]

Good for you. Let me know if you find anything out.

 

[richs]

Hi-

I'm sorry that I don't know windows too much, but if I were faced with the same situation, I would go to task manager and start blowing away applications (like "fax" machines) and rerunning my application until the offending message went away. Ergo, the last application that I blew away would be the offending task.......

"Windows, if you will not tell me, I'll beat it out of you with a hammer!"

Sorry. I do linux stuff. But it should work.

Cheers,

Rich S.

 

[hotrodtod]

I somewhat agree with your ideas as to uninstall to figure out what application is using the same port. On the other hand, if that application is causing the problem you are still going to need to configure the ports to work on separate IRQ #'s. The BIOS is the only place I know how to change those configurations.

 

[itprofessnl1]

Do this keyboard shortcut WINDOWS+PAUSE/BREAK, Then select the DEVICE MANAGER TAB.