I am using XP under VM Ware Player using Windows 10. I run a DOS program under XP. The program uses 4 serial ports. If I use DEBUG I can see that 4 ports exist at 40:0 (COM1=3F8, COM2=2F8, COM3=3E8, COM4=2E8). So I shut down XP and configured the settings with 4 serial ports, each with a named pipe. The pipe names are \\.pipe\com_1, 2, 3 and 4. For the Named Pipe dialog I have set it to "This end is the server" and "The other end is an application". And "connect at power on".
But when I run the program I get a popup that says "The system cannot open COM3 port requested by the application". Then if I click Ignore it gives the same message except for COM4. Note that COM1 and 2 work just fine via the named pipe. My program works on a real DOS using COM1,2,3,4.
I had this problem with earlier versions of VmWare but always thought it was a bug in VmWare. So I updated to the latest Player so now I think there is something I don't understand.
Note: When I click on the Serial Port settings I see a message that says "Virtual printers must be enabled in the preferences". I don't know why because I'm not using a printer but I enabled it anyway. I get the same problem.
Can someone please help me?