Com Port Missing

I have an IBM Aptiva E5D with Win 98. My Hot
Sync on my Palm stopped working and I have
traced the cause to Com port 1 is missing.
I went to device manager and looked at the Ports.
Only Com 2 is listed along with my printer port
LPT 1. Com 1 is not listed and there are no
yellow warning signs present. I need to get
Com 1 installed again. How do I do it.
Thanks,

Jerry

 

Start by going into the BIOS setup, and make sure Com 1 is active.
Try the Add New Hardware wizard, see if that picks it up.

 

In trying to find missing com 1 I went into
the bios and selected output devices. It
said Serial Port enabled but did not break
it down any further.

Next I went into add new hardware and selected
add from a list. I selected com and LPT ports.
Just Com 2 and LTP 1 were present. After the
first try it added Com 3. I did it again and it
added Com 4. I did it again thinking it would
now add Com 1 but it did not, it added com 5.

For some reason Com 1 is not being added and I
need com 1 for my Palm Sync.

I am open to any ideas on getting com 1
installed again.

Thanks, Jerry

 

Com 1 is assigned to my modem. I found it in
modem properties. It is NOT listed in device
manager. Is this normal? I have com 2,3,& 4
listed in device manager. I added com 3 & 4 with
adding new hardware function. But adding new
hardware skips adding Com 1.

Thanks, Jerry

 

That's normal for an IBM. The modem is a winmodem, aka softmodem, and will take any available com port.
If it's a hard modem, then IBM has decided that com 1 is where it belongs.
You might be able to move it by going in to device mangler and changing it to com 2, freeing up com 1 for your Palm.
I know on most machines it would be relatively easy to do this, on an IBM it's anybody's guess.