serial port 2 disabled?

[orange39er]

i have a netsignia210 smartcard reader/writer. i hooked it up to my computer where you would normally hook up the mouse. it has a plug called a wedge that you can hook your mouse back into it. it also has a cable goin to the 9 pin serial port. i think my problem is that my serial port 2 is disabled and i need to activate it so i can have my mouse and my card programmer hooked to my computer at the same time. can anyone tell me how to do this, in terms that a child can understand? mabye write me a guide or something and send it to me? or if its not to hard, just post the instructions here. PLEASE HELP....thank you, my email address is dshew99@home.com

[stu]

Ok you need to find out what you've got hooked up etc.

Boot your system up and right click your mouse on My Computer, highlight Properties and click on it. This should bring up your System Properties box. Click on Device Manager and this displays all the bits n pieces I guess that your system has attatched etc.
Have a look down and you will see a heading Ports with a + sign next to it, click the + sign and the tree should expand listing for example com port 1, printer port (LPT1) etc etc depending on what you have enabled.

You should also be able to find your smart card reader/writer here under a separate heading as well presuming its all installed correctly.

If you cant find anything you are looing for here then you need to have a look in your BIOS set up and this depends on your motherboard.

For mine I boot my system and hit the delete key on the first screen where it does the memory test etc, and my com ports and serial ports are listed under the integrated peripherals heading where I can enable and disable them. Have a look and see if you can find something. If you dont feel comfortable playing around with it dont adjust anything, let us know what you find and we'll take it from there.