Windows 7 Com Ports?

[JohnHuntington]

I'm running a US Globalsat BU-353 GPS Puck, Franson GPS gate, and feeding that info into GRLevel2, WeathertapHD, and Microsoft Streets and Trips. When I first got this Lenovo laptop (which has no physical com ports), I had bunch of problems with the BU-353, and switched to another GPS unit one (which then got stolen) and then back to he BU-353. The BU-353 had an updated driver and feeds into GPSGate just fine, and I can set the com port with no problem, and all of these programs have worked in the past.

I recently bought a laptop mount for the car, and moved the GPS Puck to another USB Port, and now about 10 different Com Ports are showing as "in use" in Windows, even though I only have the one input configured and the two outputs from GPS Gate. And I can now get Streets and Trips receiving GPS data, but not GRLevel. It seems that the com ports I can assign to GPSGate outputs are out of the range that GRLevel can see?

I don't think this is a GRLevel problem, it's some Windows craziness. Does anyone know how to get Windows 7 to release the unused com ports that it incorrectly thinks are in use? I've searched online and in windows help but couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

John Huntington
www.controlgeek.net

 

[JohnHuntington]

Oh, here's a screen capture to help clarify things.

 

[Greg Neuman]

C:\> set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
C:\> devmgmt.msc

Have you tried "Show hidden devices" in the "View" menu?

 

[Mark Blue]

This is an interesting one John. I do not have an answer for you yet, but I do have a couple of questions that will hopefully lead somewhere.

1. What is the other entry in Device Manager - the one labeled "Intel Active Management Technology" and what COM port # is assigned to that at the end of the string? Does this line in Device Manager exist because of the other puck you mentioned that was stolen and what model of puck was that?

2. Do any of the ports that are shown as "in use" (#3 - #11) in your screen grabs coincide with the virtual ports that appear in the Output tab on GPSGate?

Let me know and I'll keep thinking about this one as it's definitely a brain teaser to say the least.

 

[Walt VanRheen]

Have you tried disabling GPS gate, rebooting and are the IN USE com ports now available? My thought is that GPSgate is already replicating even though you are not using them.

 

[Rejean Boudreau]

Best trick when using parallel to usb connection, for GPS usage.

You can clean up the system device to remove the unecessary com port created. And do the same in GPSGate.

After the cleanup and reboot, always plug the GPS first in the USB port without turning on the GPS unit. Get into the device manager and look for the newly allocated port (on some system - aka driver - you need to power on the GPS unit to get it registered, but if it's working, keep the GPS off).

Second, start GPS Gate and review the com port assignement to make sure you will receive the NMEA signal from the previously allocated port. Then turn on the GPS - make sure you got everything working in GPSGate before trying anything else.

Once you got it working from GPSGate, review all the pseudo port GPSGate will provide, and tune your other software from that list.

I'm on my second season with such installation (cable converter from Parallel port to USB). I had some issues at the beginning last year (2009), but no issue since i used the procedure i just gave you.

 

[Mark Blue]

I've given this some additional thought and looked at some of the entries in my Device Manager and I believe the ports labeled as "in use" are the virtual ports that have been created by GPSGate. Those ports match up perfectly with the assignments in my system compared to what shows on the Output tab of GPSGate.

If I were you I would delete the "Instances" folder for GPSGate by following these instructions here: Franson Forum.

The path in Vista is this: C:\Users\[Your User Name]\Documents\GpsGate\Instances\Default and is probably something similar in Windows 7.

After deleting the Instances folder I'd run the GPSGate wizard again and you should be set. Hopefully this will free up the lower COM port numbers that are used by programs such as GRLX.

 

[JohnHuntington]

Thanks to all for the responses! I'll try to work on this this weekend.