OK – guess I expected to provoke a reaction, sorry. You folk were falling over yourselves last query I had (and so much appreciated!) – but seeing the current problem disappearing onto the third page was almost unbearable and I was losing hair! I apologize and will make amends.
Problem: getting my new netbook to recognize a modem connected via a 9pin lead and an adapter to USB port. Device Manager was only showing ‘Other Devices’ (not ‘Ports’) and the ‘USB to serial cable’ had the yellow question mark!
Solution: after advice from the manufacturer of the software, the yellow question mark was the relevant point. Lack of the correct drivers for the adapter (not the modem) was the problem – finding which ones ran the programme on my other laptop helped and I subsequently found new drivers from the manufacturer of the adapter. These I downloaded, copied on to the netbook, and helped it to find them when re-installing the adapter. Bingo!! I believed it had to be some simple solution but, not being a geek, was losing sleep as well as hair. Sorry again for my impatience – I surely will never have a problem with the computer ever again :-)
