What are COM and parallel ports?

Question

and how do i disable them? i've tried looking in device manager but can't find anything.

Answer 1

Com ports are the 9 pin Serial input/output ports that were first designed with MS-DOS in the very first version. When not used, these are entirely inactive. If your motherboard has these, you can deactivate them if you wish, but that will not change the performance of your computer in any way. Many systems came with two... COM1: and COM2:

Parallel ports are also available from the early days. They also are completely inactive when not used. These are the parallel printer ports. They are a 25 pin double row connector that you see in the back. Most systems came with only one. These are designed as LPT1:. Again, you can disable these in the system BIOS, but this will not alter the performance of your computer in any way.

When you start your computer, you can enter SETTINGS or BIOS SETTINGS. This is displayed briefly on the screen. Depending on what BIOS that you have, you get into the Peripherals section. There you can see an option to disable the LPT1 and COM ports. After starting up the computer, you might get into the Device Manager and can uninstall these items. Then REBOOT to see if they come back.

I recommend that you do not do this; since it serves no purpose. But you might be adding a new device into your system that uses these ports of their own. Since you didn't say, I can't imagine what. But let's say that you are... in that case, you might want to disable or reconfigure the built-in ports so that your new board uses COM1 and LPT1.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 2

COM port means communications port. You attach stuff like modems and fax machines in them. Parallel ports are used for connecting older scanners and printers, that do not have a usb connection. Shops only sell printers and scanners with usb or firewire connections now, so to get things that have a parallel connection try ebay and second hand computer shops.

Answer 3

COM port is short for Communications Port ... Parallel is usually a printer port ... they are physical connection points to your computer ... don't worry about disabling them.

Answer 4

A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting various peripherals. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port . The IEEE 1284 standard defines the bi-directional version of the port. A COM port is a computer port... I am a software Engineer if u like my answer select it as best answer thanks..... Just manually delete it will do

Answer 5

Both are legacy devices and are rarely used today, but most desktop PC still have them built-in.

Please re-post and describe your specific problem and WHY you are asking how to disable them. Then, we can try to help.

Answer 6

you do it in the bios