PC Com 1 problems

comport 1 won't allow barcode reader to work. believe the port is damaged by an employee using a pda in the machine. used a serial mouse is com1 and when the machine booted up it said "can't open com1 and gave msg that palmsync may be in the slot. can't find palmsync. seems like if mouse works in port it is ok. how do i find palmsync running? and get rid of it?

Originally posted 7 Mar 2002

The port isn't damaged. The "Palm Desktop" software, which hotsyncs a Palm device to a Windows machine, installs as a "Startup" service by default. Hotsync grabs the default serial port (usually COM1) at boot time and sits there waiting for a hotsync signal from an attached Palm. In the meantime, COM1 can't be used for anything else.

There are about 5 ways to fix this. The easiest are as follows:

1) If you don't need Palm Desktop any more, just uninstall it and reboot.

2) If you want to keep Palm Desktop but want to disable the startup-at-boot feature, look in the system tray (the little framed area on the far right of the Windows taskbar where there is probably a clock). You will find a little icon that looks like a circle with two arrows through it.

Click the Hotsync icon and a menu will appear

Click SETUP

Click "MANUAL - (You Start Hotsync Manager Yourself)"

Click OK

Then click the tray icon again and click EXIT, which will end the Hotsync service.

Originally posted 8 Mar 2002 by James Broder
james@skunkware.tv