Once apon a time Frank Croft said, 'Two COM2's' to Simon Byrnand...

 FC> Thank you very much Simon. This is the first bit of recognition that I
 FC> have received concerning this problem, yeh after going thru hell and
 FC> finally the modem is working fine, this little com2 prob is all that is
 FC> left.

I wouldnt worry about it actually, most machines I have come across have
this same little 'glitch'.

 FC> It turns out that my modem and soundcard were too close together, so
 FC> that a new prob popped up yesterday, where if I used the modem, my
 FC> soundblaster  would stop making win95 sounds, etc, until I reset. This
 FC> was ok until i  discovered that in turn the soundblaster must have been
 FC> doing something to the modem, as I could download ok, but if I tried to
 FC> upload it would slow down to  3cps until the transfer would abort..

Sounds like a conflicting IRQ. Win95 gets very upset about conflicting
IRQ's :)

 FC> Hmmm, so I took the thing apart to see whats happening and found the
 FC> prob,  swapped scanner card and soundblaster and all seems ok so far.

When you say swapped, do you mean physically, or address/IRQ wise? Physically
swapping ISA cards wont do anything as all the slots are identically wired.

Swapping PCI or VESA cards is another story though...

 FC> I keep hearing, ocassionally, sounds coming from the computer as if
 FC> the modem is trying to pick up the line. Although not too sure if it is
 FC> the modem, or my toes cracking.. ;)

:)

 FC> Ah, well thanks for letting me know there are more two com ports
 FC> people out, there.

Yup, we're in the majority, I think ;-)

 FC> I might add, perhaps this is also a commong thread among us..
 FC> When first started using the system, I would get crashes 'hangs' while
 FC> online, then I discovered the two com2's. I rang around and was told to
 FC> install  'bitware' a terminal program that came with the modem, I had
 FC> done this  previously but didnt like it much.. Now the strange thing is
 FC> that bitware, seemed to fix the crashing problem, until the sound
 FC> problems popped up.

Cant quite see the connection.

 FC> Now the crashing and sound probs could be unrelated, as I disconnected
 FC> the modem from the line, while trying to fix it, and also the sound
 FC> card speaker outputs, so this could have moved the cards closer
 FC> together, which turned out to be causing the interference.

Closer together?

 FC>
 FC> I would like to speculate that 'bitware' if indeed this is a program
 FC> that the  other computers you have encountered this two com2 problem
 FC> on, have used,  writes some setup thing into one of win95's files to
 FC> install this phantom com2.

Thats quite possible, I have bitware myself, unfortunately I didnt check
BEFORE I installed bitware :-(

Regards,
Simon

... "Bother," said Pooh, as he had Eeyore for dinner.
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