Why are my COM ports unavailable?

I just set up an MSI K7t266-Pro2-RU, Althlon 1800+, and Windows XP Pro. I have a 56k PCI Winmodem, a

SCSI controller card and a graphics card. When i tried to install a serial digital camera memory reader on one

of the COM ports, it reported that none were available. The modem takes up COM 3. What could be using

COM 1 and COM 2? Is there a BIOS setting that might be messing it up? Any way to force the modem to take

a normal COM 1 or 2? Where do you find in XP which devices are using the COM ports?

 

COM 1 & 2 are your external COM ports. If your modem is on COM 3 it is using the COM1 IRQ. GO into the BIOS and see if both of your exteranl COM ports are enabled.

 

I checked the BIOS and the ports were on AUTO. Changing them to the ususal interrupts for COM 1 2 still made them unavailable. Any way to check what is using the interrupts?

 

Look in device manager to see what ports are being used and what IRQ's they are using.