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I recently installed a Cannon wireless printer for temporary use, the drivers of which set nearly all my COM ports to be constantly in-use (an occasionnal bug noted in the ReadMe after installation with no fixes - thanks Canon idiots!).
I have now deleted the printer and drivers but the ports (COM 1-2,4-13 & 15-32) constantly show up as (in-use). Note that they don't appear like this directly in device manager, but do if I try to re-assign a COM port on some hardware (Device Manager -> Port Settings -> Advanced).
I have tried deleting the ports in Control panel -> Print Server Properties but I get the error message 'Selected ports cannot be deleted. The request is not supported'.
I have also tried to delete the ports through Print Management, but here I get the error 'The selected port cannot be deleted. This operation is not supported.'. If I try to configure the ports I get the error 'The selected port cannot be configured. Operated could not be completed (error 0x00000057).
Does anyone have any alternative methods of getting rid of the in-use status from these ports? I work often with embedded hardware connected over USB so need my COM ports free.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that and re-started a few times. It seems that I can now delete the ports from the Device Manager, but they still show up in Devices and Printers -> Print Server Properties -> Ports and do not allow me to re-configure them there They also still show up as in-use on Device Manager -> Ports -> Advanced, though now I have 256 COM ports!!! The new additions are not in-use. – Ad_S – 2014-03-05T00:17:58.420