Modem switches COM ports on boot

[gtrs]

A friend of mine is useing AOL and a few weeks ago was deleting her program and messed up her modem settings to where AOL had to keep resetting up her modem everytime she started her computer. I checked it out and found out what it is doing is alternating COM ports for the modem every time she boots. On one boot-up the modem will set up on COM3 and the next time it will set up on COM4. She is running Win98 with a 56.6 Lucent WinModem. I have checked the device manager and gone over all devices to make sure there were no conflicts, checked in Safe Mode for duplicate devices, I have uninstalled and reinstalled dial up networking and tcp/ip, reextrated winsock.dll, wsock32.dll and wsock.vxd. Finally I ended up reinstalling windows to a new directory in order to get a clean install and it still does the same thing.

[reboot]

Remove the modem and all com ports in device manager via safe mode.
Remove the dialup connection, and any AOL crap at the same time.
Shutdown, take the modem out of the computer.
Restart, shutdown, put the modem back in.
Detect and install the drivers for the modem.
Go to Start > Run > and type in "inetwiz" sans quotes.
Make a new connection.
Open IE and go to tools, Internet Options, Connection tab, and tell it to ONLY use the new connection.

[glc]

That's fine and dandy, but AOL uses a proprietary dialer and the modem has to be defined within AOL, not DUN.

Remove the modem and all com ports in device manager via safe mode.
In add/remove programs, Windows Setup, Communications, uncheck Dialup Networking. In control panel, Networks, remove all components.
Shutdown, take the modem out of the computer.
Restart, shutdown, put the modem back in.
Detect and install the drivers for the modem.
Open AOL, it will reinstall the necessary (for it, anyway) files. It will have you restart at least once. Then run AOL setup to redetect the modem.

[reboot]

Ah, @^*&%&*^$%^, I missed the AOL reference.
Thanks GLC.

[gtrs]

Went through all of that and it still does the same thing. :(

[reboot]

Repeat the steps above, but go into BIOS setup and disable com 2, set "PnP OS Installed" to NO, set "Reset configuration data" to YES, restart.

[gtrs]

Went through all of those except the BIOS did not have an option to disable the COM ports. Finally tried a new modem and it worked so apparently it was some glitch with the modem. Thanks for all of the help.