serial port not working

[joko]

my serial port on my laptop seems to not be working ( i cannot recall ever using it, so it may never have worked)

in device manager, the little yellow exclamation mark that says theres a problem with it, and when i click on that, it says 'This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have all its drivers installed. (Code 24)
and when i try to troubleshoot into 'driver' it says it has 'stopped', but underneath it says 'enabled'

when i click start - it says ''error, cant be started because its disabled or has no devices associated with it''

in lpt port1 is a printer port (though no printer attached at the moment) and comm3 is the modem.
its the 9 pin type

the driver is listed as- C:\windows\system32\drivers\serial.sys

i am on winxp.


any ideas?

thanks