COM Ports in use?

[N0IU]

When I bought a new computer (some time ago), of course it had several USB ports but no COM ports. Since all of my shack "stuff" used COM ports and the LPT port, I ended up buying a PCI card that would give me 2 COM ports and a LPT port and everything worked just fine with Vista. As I upgraded(?) my shack accessories to USB, I eventually was able to remove the card. Well now I installed a USB RigBlaster and it assigned it to COM Port 5 because, according to the Device Manager, COM Ports 1-4 are in use! How can this be? There are no COM ports anywhere in my PC!

How can I free up these COM ports???

EDIT: Figured it out. Went into Device Manager and set it to view hidden devices and deleted the "ghost" ports.

 

[Jedediah696]

for freeing up the com port...there are converters available in the market that directly give you the usb ended port....!!