Windows 2000 Comm Port Problem

dvdfan

Hi,

Im having a problem with my com ports and i taught someone might be able to help me.

First ill describe what im doing. I have an epos (Electronic Point of Sale) PC. Dont worry its basically a pc running windows 2000 with a touchscreen nothing more.

It has the following identical serial connections on the back and marked as@
1) Com1
2) Com2
3) Com3
4) Com4
5) Not Named
6) Not Named

I had 1 receipt printer connected to com1 and the touch screen was connected to com2, both working perfectly.
I added another receipt printer to com3 and it worked perfectly until i restarted and my epos software gave me the error: Error Opening Port: com3

When i noticed this i went to device manager and there was an exclamation beside com3, the error said code 10 failed to start. I tried unistalling and reinstalling the device and updating the driver. This didnt change anything.

Previous to fiddling with setting there was 5 things showing up in the device manager in the ports section as follows:

Communication Port Com1
Communication Port Com2
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port x(?) com3
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port x com4
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port x com5
Printer Port LPT1

At this stage i never noticed wheter they were PCI serial port 1 or 2.

I checked all the drivers and they were default drivers and windows couldnt find a new driver. I found the drivers disc for the pc and ran that through and at the end of that the same drivers were all still installed but the configuration in the device manager was now

Communication Port Com1
Communication Port Com2
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port 1(?) com3
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port 1 com7
ITE887 X PCI Serial Port 2 com8
Printer Port LPT1

I also tried to change port 3 to a Communication Port instead of the ITE887 X PCI Serial Port but it still had the exclamation mark. Bear in mind that i could print to Com3 for a while until i restarted the system.

I tried re-installing the epos software and that didnt make any difference either. But now im confused, if i connect the printer to com4 (now com7 on device manager) it dosent recognise it. If i switch the 2 printers to com1 & 2 and plug out the touchscreen they both print fine too.

Any ideas how i can solve this problem?
Why are some ports Communication Ports and some PCI Serial Ports, is there a difference?
Why do i have 6 serial ports at the back of the pc and yet on 5 com's on device manager?
The last 2 comms are now changed to com7 and 8 but they were previously com4&5 and on the back of the pc com4 is marked beside the serial port, is this changed to a new port number or does it need to be configured.
Is it possible that only the some ports will work for the printer or should all the serial ports work?

Any Ideas, i know the post is long but i wanted to give as much info as possible.

bushy...

Have you looked at the bios to see if they are now disabled in it ? Maybe the battery could be on its way out ?

dvdfan

Would this auto disable in the bios or would i have needed to disable it. I havent been messing around in the bios.

I can only remote access the pc settings at the moment so i cant restart the computer to get into the bios. Any other ways to check via cmd or something similar.

Would the battery being on the way out be a likely cause of a problem like this or would it be last case scenario.

If it is the battery whats involved in fixing this and how much is it likely to cost?

dvdfan

Bump