Find the number of serial and parallel ports on computer

I've never found a decent way by looking in the registry or anything like that. Some things work on NT, some on 95/98, but not on both.

To find serial ports, I simply try to Open every 'file' named "COM1" , "COM2", .... up to, sayt "COM99"
It either works, fails with an error code that means 'not there' or fails with an error code that means 'exists, but open by someone else'.

That's the only way I've come up with so far.

As a comment, this took me quite a while to figure out, so it might be worth PAQ-ing as a possible solution. I haven't found or come up with anything better since.
(You could even give me the points :-)  )

but that is not the answer
i found the answr at the internet
the answer is look to the registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\PARALLEL PORTS
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\SERIALCOMM

OK - if you think that's the answer, it would be useful to expand a little so this question can be PAQ-d for future reference.

I'm not convinced, though. Have you tried tihs on Win95/98, NT, XP and 2000? I'm pretty sure I took that path, too, and it doesn't work on all platforms.

i tried at 98 and above,
i dont tried at windows 95,