[Dx4win] DX4WIN / Windows 7 / radio interface question

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

[posted on behalf of Jim Price K6ZH]

From: Jim Price
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 9:52 PM
To: dx4win at mailman.qth.net
Subject: DX4WIN / Windows 7 / radio interface question

"Santa" (a.k.a. my wife) brought me a new HP Pavilion dv7 laptop, to 
replace my 6-year old Compaq Presario.  I have been using DX4WIN on the 
Compaq for quite a few years.  My radio is an IC-746, and I've been 
"talking" to it via a USB-to-Serial Converter plus a home-made interface 
box.  It's worked well.

So, today I bit the bullet and loaded DX4WIN 7 on the new HP laptop.  I 
then plugged in the USB-to-Serial converter, and the computer found a 
driver right away.  It assigned the new device (which actually has 2 
ports) as COM4 and COM5.  Since DX4WIN now will accommodate COM4 and 
COM5 in its pull-down menu for the radio, I figured - OK, let's go for 
it.  I assigned COM4 (and later COM5) to the IC-746 in the "Radio" part 
of File/Preference.  But to no avail - the program can't seem to "find" 
the radio, even though I'm quite confident that the interface to the 
serial converter is working.  It just says the 'radio interface timed 
out' when I try to 'Start Radio'.

The other troubling thing is that with Windows 7 I can't figure out how 
to reassign the port numbers - to COM1 and COM2.  It used to be easy 
with XP.  I'm not sure that I need to do that, but I'm thinking that 
maybe the converter only recognizes COM1 and COM2.  Any ideas?

AND/OR do I have to "turn on" something in Windows 7 in order to use a 
serial port?  I know that one has to enable Telnet, for example.

Appreciate any help; I really need to get over this hump so that, among 
other things, I can use N1MM and other contest logging programs!

73 - Jim, K6ZH:  k6zh at arrl.net