INSRUCTIONS ON HOW WINDOWS 95/98/Me/2000 ASSIGNS PCI SERIAL PORTS

USEFUL TO UNDERSTANDING CONFIGURATION WHEN SOFTWARE MIGHT
REQUIRE A SPECIFIC COM PORT BELOW COM 5

Windows 95/98/Me/2000 cannot enumerate PCI serial ports starting
at COM2 or COM3.
 
The way the Windows serial port enumerator (serenum.vxd) works is:

  It first checks the I/O address of the serial port.
  If the I/O address is 3f8 then it assigns that serial port COM1.
  If the I/O address is 2f8 then it assigns that serial port COM2.
  If the I/O address is 3e8 then it assigns that serial port COM3.
  If the I/O address is 2e8 then it assigns that serial port COM4.
 
If the port has an IO address other than what is shown above,
then Windows enumerates the ports starting at COM5.

PCI cards are completely configured by the system. The system cannot
configure PCI cards with the I/O addresses shown above. 
Those are reserved for ISA devices so Windows will always enumerate
our PCI ports starting at COM5.

IF YOU WISH TO REASSIGN SERIAL PORTS, USE THE LAVA REDIRECT SOFTWARE