[SOLVED] Windows com ports gone missing!

[JamesAB]

Hello everyone,

I have just completed a fresh install of W7 (over the preceeding W7) ,on my Dell, Studio laptop (which had become rather sluggish!) All appears to have gone quite well: everything seems to work ok and much faster.

I have devices which require the us of a com port, several of which I know the laptop had. However they seem to have dissappeared and are no longer shown in Device manager, hidden or otherwise. Can anyone give me some advice on how to restore them?

Thanks & Regards,

Jim

 

[SteveSFL]

Hello, may I ask a couple of questions please? Look in the BIOS make sure that all ports show up. if they are their, then I ask did you download the chipset software and install it, very important? You only stated that you did a fresh install and nothing else.. Thanks Steve

 

[Digerati]

What "com" port(s)? Note traditionally, "com" port means serial port and most computers don't support them these days.

So did you mean USB? Ethernet? FireWire?

What is the model number of this notebook?

 

[JamesAB]

Thank you for your replies, gentelmen and apologies for not responding sooner. The PC in question is a Dell Studio 1558 laptop. For the purpose in question (which is the connection to an astronomical telescope) I need a serial (RS232) to USB connection. This I had before I reinstalled Windows 7. I simply used the W7 installation disk which came with the laptop and reintalled the O/S. Apart from the missing port all went well including the 10 million windows updates that were required!

I knew that I needed a driver to use the com port(s) so I downloaded and installled the PL2303 prolific driver installer under the impression that this would solve the connection problem. After this installation that my astronomy software reported that there were still no com ports present. I found after an internet search that I could show com and Lpt ports in device manager and having done this "com 3" was shown. However I still could not make a connection to my telescope.

I noted that therre was an entry in Device manager that read (something like) "Fast USB to Serial Converter" I clicked on this a found that its driver was not installed, so I asked DM to look for and install a driver. To my surprise it did so and I was immediatly able to connect to and control my telescope. I also have just found that "Com1" is also diplayed. So the problem is solved,

Why the ports dissappeared I don't know. but all is fine now!

Thanks & Regards,

Jim

 

[SteveSFL]

That is what I thought driver issue, awesome and congrats

 

[Digerati]

Great! I am glad you got it sorted and thanks for posting back with your detailed followup!