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YashyFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Serial port on Virtual machine not working? How can I test if it is setup correctly?

hi guys,

I have a VM running a Windows XP Pro using Vmware Workstation 8.0. There is a serial port on the actual physical host. To which a scanner is attached. I've added a serial port on the VM and have selected it to 'Auto Detect' and it says in brackets 'COM1' next to it which in my opinion should indicate that it has seen it?

However, the application which picks up the scanner is not doing so right now.

How can I test that the serial port is working? I've tried following this guide http://www.ni.com/support/serial/verhyper.htm and it didn't work either:(

Any help would be great
Thanks again
Yashy
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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When the VM starts, enter the BIOS and change the COM port settings, to a port value, rather than Auto Detect.

I would suggest 2F8, which is COM2, and then check you have COM2 defined in Windows Device Manager.
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ASKER

Thank you sir:)

When you say 'check you have COM2 defined', do you mean on the virtual host I should go into the device manager and go into the 'Port' settings? But then what do I set those values to? Same as that which exists on the physical host?
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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ASKER

I've gone into the BIOS and made the changes in the VM Bios to Enable instead of Auto Detect. COM2 is now 2F8. COM1 is 03F8.

However, on the VM, in the options you can only select 'Com1 (Auto Detect)'. It's still not working using COM1. The other available options are COM3 or COM4.

But in the device manager on the VM, COM 2 can be seen.

Any ideas?
The VM settings are correct, to "map" to your serial port on the host?

your host serial port is known to be working?

It does not really matter what COM is in use, but it's important that the address 2F8 is registered in the Windows XP OS? (in device manager)
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ASKER

Well i'd need to test the actual serial port to ensure it is working. Maybe via the actual hyperterminal on the XP OS?
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compdigit44

You could test the scanner / device from your host workstation running Workstation to see if he device is able to be detected and work.