com port issue
 

Trying to move waypoints etc bewteen my Garmin Etrex Legend and my pc via the supplied serial lead and using "Easy GPS" and "G7towin" .
Set to Com 1, I get " serial port could not be opened"
Set to com 2, I get "no data received from the GPS"
The etrex is brand new. My puter is running W2000. Device Manager says "device ( both Com 1 and 2) are working properly"
Can my serial ports be being used by some other programs? How to find out and stop them to check the GPS connection?

I had a similar situation recently on Win XP Pro.

Problem: I needed to put an interface cable on COM 2 but after physically connecting it to the COM 2 I found that the computer wouldn't talk to it.

My solution (eventually) was to firstly confirm that COM 2 was being used by something else. I downloaded the free programme ComChk32 from here. After extracting/unzipping and running the programme I got a red square against COM 2 which showed that the port was talking to something else. (I used this programme to try to prove that it was the computer that was blocking me from COM 2 and not my interface cable that was faulty).

Next I realised that although I was now on Broadband via a USB modem the computer had originally been used on dial-up using a modem on COM 2. I then deleted all hardware references to the long disconnected modem and re-ran ComChk32 but was still locked out from COM 2. I then went into Control Panel and Network Connections to find my Dial Up connections and deleted my dial up Freeserve connection and re-ran ComChk32 and got a green light and tried my peripheral on COM 2 and found that it had now come to life. (I might have rebooted the computer after the deletions and before running ComChk32, I can't remember.)

I am not an expert by any means so someone else may well have a better idea but this solved my problem.

Best of luck as I fully understand your frustration.

et
Thanks a million - that advice fixed it. Actually, it wasn't my dial up modem that was hogging the com port, but it was a pc-pc connection via a null modem cable which I had recently set up. I deleted that and bingo.
This forum is priceless.