Unsupported serial port

WD Ver 10.37S53
Davis Vantage Pro 2
Windows 7 64-bit

For some reason, today, WD isn’t able to connect to my weather station using the motherboard’s COM1 (which it has been using fine for some time now, until last reboot). So I installed a USB Serial Port adapter, which came up as COM17. WD shows COM17 as being available, but it doesn’t give me any way to select it!! The radio buttons only go from Com1 to Com16. Is there some way to get around this? Maybe a config file I can manually edit or something??

I tried editing wdisplay.ini, and changed the comport setting to com17, but that doesn’t work either. In fact, it doesn’t appear to be attempting to open com17 at all (the port still shows as openable, though wdisplay is currently running.)

Nevermind!
I found instructions on how to reset the serial port, which got com1 responding again.
ITM, I found (on the same site) instructions on how to move an existing serial port device to a different port; I changed it to com2, reconfigured WD, and it came right up, running fine…
whew!!

I had a similar problem recently with a very old software that would only connect to the original Com 1 - Com 4, but those ports weren’t available to the USB/Serial dongle I was using :? A bit of googling and I discovered the concept of hidden com ports, previously used as virtual com ports and thereafter locked out to other devices.

That’s cool! This is basically the same info as I found at the other site, but this site presents it much more clearly!!

and I love the comment:
“There, under a rock!! It’s a gaggle of com ports!!”