if you truly have never modified anything in your motherboards bios
before then perhaps before you try to do so you should check to see if
your modem has any jumpers or switches on it to set it to a different
irq/io range/com port, as an isa modem it may well do so, i have a
generic isa modem that i have set to irq5 using jumpers on the card and
it installs into windows as com3 and in linux as /dev/ttyS2,
if no joy then while your machine is booting up, when you see the post
screen -the memory count and ide drive detect- try pressing the delete
button on your keyboard, older motherboards and certain less common
brands have other ways to access the bios but this usually works, your
machine is quite newish sounding and i would hope that hp gave you a
manual with it! you should than see a simple menu of bios options to
access, try using the cursor keys to navigate around, if memory serves
you will want to select a set of options entitled 'integrated
peripherals' or something similar, select and press return, if you have
the right set of options you will see an entry for com ports, select
com2 by highlighting it, and if your bios is navigated the same way as
mine, then use pageup or pagedown buttons to scroll through various
options for this com port, note the currently selected value before
changing, look for a value called 'disabled' press escape and highlight
a screen option called save changes and exit, press return, press y for
yes.
as i have implied this how to alter things in the bios on my motherboard
which is an award bios v4.60, yours may operate differently,
let us know if this works
bascule
Murray wrote:
>
>
> I've never modified anything in BIOS before, how would I go about doing
> that?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Murray
