Hello all. I am working on installing a modem for one of the users here at work. We run an all Windows NT 4.0 shop. The system is an old (I do mean old, around 3-4 if not 5 years old) Pentium 90 (may be 100) MHz with 32 MB RAM. The system itselfruns fine. However, I took a working modem out of one user’s system, placed it in this machine, and NT doesn’t see it. In fact, it doesn’t even go look at the COM port the jumpers are set to (COM 3).
I’ve changed COM settings to 1, 2, and even 4, with the only change being a disabled mouse when set to COM 1 (go figure :P). Well, it’s an old modem. So I ordered a brand new 3COM 56k Fax/Modem.
Put this in after setting the jumpers to COM 3, and it’s still not recognized. I went to Control Panel…Ports and noted COM 2 was already installed. Installed COM 3, rebooted, set the jumpers to COM 3, nothing. The trouble is, when detecting the modem, it doesn’t even search on the COM port it’s installed on!
So I figured it must be the machine. So I grabbed a different system, still a Pentium 100 (hey, we’re stingy, what can I say?). This particular machine has no COM ports installed, and as such doesn’t even search when told to detect the modem. I went into BIOS on this machine and enabled COM 2. I set the modem to COM 2 and it went looking…on the external COM port (which of course had nothing on it). Modem was not detected.
Now I KNOW I’ve installed a modem in NT before, and that modems were installed on these old systems once before. What am I missing?
