Was working on a Dell desktop with XP Home, fully updated, that wouldn't connect to the internet thru the dial up modem. The modem couldn't find a dial tone (one was present on the phone line, I checked) I installed a new modem and went to the modem properties and discovered that ALL com ports were locked by some program or process. I did a complete virus scan, using severall different proggys, on line and off (pulled the hard drive and scanned from different computer.) and the computer came up clean.
Any idea what would be tying up all com ports or a method of releasing them?

Thanks!

Hi OldGuru

Have you tried deleting the com ports via the Device manager and then re-booting, letting Windows re-discover and re-install them?

Also did you install the drivers for the modem?

Yes did the modem driver installation and tryed the removing from device manager, no help, every com port I try to assign the modem to, windows tells me that it is in use

Update: All your suggestions still didn't fix it although I thought they would. Found the culprit tho, I found a Brother Printer that had a failed install was "locking" all the ports, when I removed the Printer and the software/drivers for it, the ports all became available again.

:-) Hey Old Guru,

That's great . Thanks for posting the fix on this, every resolution someone finds helps someone else with thier problem.

TTFN

T