Removing unused COM numbers

Every time a USB device that represents a COM port (such as the BSF-7-USB) is plugged into a different USB port of a computer, a new COM number will be assigned.  If you change USB hubs there’s a whole new set of USB ports!.

Eventually there are no numbers left below 16, but SI-Config needs the COM number to be below 16.

The following trick allows you to clean up the unused COM ports:

First start a Command Prompt session in Administrator mode (right-click on the Command Prompt link in Start Menu | All Programs | Accessories, and select Run As Administrator).

type in the following commands:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

start devmgmt.msc

Once the device manager starts up, there’s an extra menu item in the View submenu.

Select it so that the checkmark is there.

admini

Now expand the Ports (COM & LPT) section to see all COM ports.

Now you can select an extra COM port, and uninstall it.

uninstall

I do not delete the drivers for the device:

confirm

Insure you don’t delete anything important!  You’re in charge, I’m not. 

After I deleted all the SPORTident USB to UART Bridges, I inserted my BSF-7-USB, and the computer now had to re-install the driver (but I didn’t have to download it again).  Once the installation was done (took about a minute), I now have it installed on COM4.  All is good!

[Thanks to digi.com for coming up with this trick]

Print | posted on Saturday, August 30, 2014 10:30 PM

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