Solved: Communication port is invalid or in use!

My sister has a Toshiba laptop, with XP, 2.4 processor, and 256 megs of ram! It workeed fine until this week. Now when she tries to dial up to the internet, she gets an error message saying Communication port is invalid or in use by another application. I have checked everything, and can find nothing that is using the port, which is com port 3. I also uninstalled the modem driver, and reinstalled it, and also updated the driver, all to no avail! There are no com ports showing in device manager, either! The modem is an internal part of the MB. I'm at a point that I don't really know anything else to do! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

It seems Port 3 has been reserved for overided by something else... hmm....

Port 3/4 commonly used in laptop for other IEEE devices, and modem usually ported at Port 1.

Anyway, Communication Port tab never told the devices used there, but listed the list of Ports on the motherboard. If you can see the under Network Adapters your modem, open the properties and see what it displayed. You might have "This Device is Working Properly" or other. With your, it might have problems or so. You might want to check it.

Try to contact Toshiba if you still have waranty though. Otherwise using DevMan try to organize your other peripherals, if you can't, try to check Bios if the port is used for something else such as infrared or bluetooth.

 

I have tried that already! I went into the bios, and made sure the ports were active, also! I guess maybe the modem is bad! Thanks for your reply!

 

Found out the modem had a connection problem! I put some paper between the modem, and the case of the laptop, to force the modem tighter into the connector, and it worked fine after that! This is a common problem with Toshiba laptops, it would seem!