How to eliminate defective port

During a recent IVT install, a number of ports were installed incorrecty (code 1). There is a device instance id which says roots\ports\000# where # is specified as 5,6,7…18. . In all cases no driver files were loaded. I reinstalled the software, and it loaded it’s necessary ports, but I can’t seem to get rid of the defective ports and everytime I load XP it gives me an error message.

How do I eliminate these ports?

Thanks.