Disabling Ports

[Markoman01027]

I don't use any of my Serial ports or my Parallel(printer) port. So I removed them from my device manager, and went into the BIOS and disabled COM 1, COM 2, and the Parallel Port. I went into Windows 2K fine, but my LAN connection was not showing up, so I tried going into properties of my network neigborhood, and it wouldn't go up. I tried opening up Control Panal, it wouldn't even open up.

So I rebooted the PC. Hit F8 and loaded up "Last known good configuration" and loaded up Hardware Profile 1. Booted up fine and LAn conenction works, everything works.

So I suspected that the problem was disabling the 3 ports. But I am wondering why, when I don't even use them?

Mouse is USB
Keyboard is PS/2
No modem installed, just NIC.

I also enabled all 3 ports in the BIOS, and now they are showing up in the Device Manager. The reason why I want to disable them, is because I want to free up some IRQ's and I don't use them..I am wondering why did this happen when I disabled them and why did it work again when I ran last known configuration once I enabled the ports again?

Anybody got any ideas?

[doctorgonzo]

Can you try disabling one port at a time to see which one is causing the problem?

[Markoman01027]

I'll try that. I should of done one port at a time. I'll let you know how it goes, when I do it.


I set COM 1 and COM 2 "auto" in the BIOS, and only COM 1 is showing up in the Device Manager.