No COM1 and COM2 ports in Device Manager panel ???

[ylan]

I started to configure Win98 SE on a friend' PC ( mobo : Abit BE6-II, 128 Mb RAM,Pentium III 550 Mhz) from scratch after reformatting the HD. After installing various drivers ( i.e. mobo , video , audio, US robotics modem) , I opened the device manager panel and found out that :

_Ports : there was only one port , the printer port LPT1 .

( I expected to see also COM1 and COM2 ports !! )

In "Other Devices" , I saw an yellow question mark in front of the phrase " PCI Serial Controller" .

I wonder if there a connection between the warning listed in "Other Devices" and the missing COM1, COM2 ports ?

I thought I had loaded the mobo drivers correctly . Then where is the driver for the PCI Serial controller located ?

**How can I fix this problem ?

Please help ... My friend is getting bonkered without his Internet connection ! Thanks,

Best regards,

 

[ski]

Reinstall the MB's chipset drivers.

If no luck, then see if the Abit site has updated MB drivers.

If those do not work, then reformat and reinstall Windows making sure that all cards are removed from the MB except the video card, and drives are disconnected except the boot HD.

 

[edfair]

If these ports are on the M/B they shouldn't be involved with the PCI bus at all.
Take a look in the BIOS and see if they have been disabled.
The PCI serial controller with the problem is the modem, which should normally go into com3 or higher if it installs correctly. But you'll probably find that you need to delete the the existing device, then reinstall using the USR software.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[ylan]

Thanks, skip and edfair, for your great advices ! It was , indeed, in the bios configuration that I found both COM ports were disabled by default !! After a minor adjustment, COM1 and COM2 finally appeared in the "Device Manager" panel. Again, thank you...