Xp com port problems

I am running wd on a gateway pentium 4 with xp pro on it.

Eight weeks ago I changed the comm setting from com 1 to a usb rs232 external com 5 port… I received much better reception from my pc interface from the weather sensors, but two weeks ago all of my com ports and the usb com ports stopped working… this was after a Microsoft xp update. When checking the device manager and reviewing all of the ports, they showed to be “working properly” however no data was comming through them. I called gateway and microsoft and neither of the tech organiztions could help. They simple took a look at the device manager and told me I had a software problem.

I tried one last thing… I went into the c:\winnt\inf directory and removed all oem##.inf and oem##.pnf files that had any reference to those items, then I removed them in the device manager, and finally I removed them from the bios. I booted and rebooted so that win drivers did not have any reference to those ports and then I reinstalled. Every com port was working properly and wd could receive data from the pc interface. During all of this time, please understand that the computer os software (win xp pro) was showing that the ports were “working properly”

If any of you are having com port problems please give us an idea of how you solved the problems.

all time often use poor old software people get blamed, when it is windows at fault!
good on you john for fixing it