I have a wierdy on my Dell laptop; in the recent few
months the idle state of the serial port is all-pins HIGH
voltage. During power-on it starts all pins LOW, but goes
all high just after the serial mouse search. When a
program opens the port, the TX pin drops to low and data
signalling goes just fine, but handshake pins remain high;
when the port is closed, all pins go low for 0.2 secs then
go all high again. System is fully patched from MS update
and the USB/Serial driver (to give another port) has been
fully removed, but no change. Dell are not responding well
and want a full reformat/reinstall. Any ideas?