Serial ports and Vista

I have a Fadal mill (standard cnc88 fadal control) and a Hyundai lathe with a Siemans 840c. control) My desktop died so I bought a new laptop for cadcam and transmitting NC files to the machines.

In the past with XP I had no problems communicating with the USB to Serial adapter. Vista and Win7 don't work with my communication software. (NCFadal and Wincomm) Does anyone have an inexpensive way to make this work? These machines are for hobbies so cost is a big issue.

I repair CNC's for a living and found these for a song. Put them in my garage for bikes and hot rod stuff. Alot of fun when they work.

This is second PC that died so I want to upgrade to something more reliable. When they only get turned on every couple of months I really can't afford to spend $300 every time I want to load a new NC file.

Any help would be really appreaciated.

Paul

there is a problem with Vista and serial over USB
you need to change the COM port away from 3, 4 or 7
COM5 seems to work

please do not ask why
it's windoze

Thanks so much, that explains why the same serial adapter works on my Bike dyno.
The dyno software ahe a gazillion com ports to chose from. All my CNC com software only allows comm 1 thru 4.

Now I have to figure out how to get more com ports for the communication software. I tried to change the com port number in the config file on NCFadal, but it gives an invalid property value msg. It was writen for windows 98. I Neal out there ant where?

unknown territory now
(and it's not my pooter!)

try uninstalling COM3 and COM4

no idea if it'll work...