# How to Find Hidden COM Ports ## Overview This mini tutorial will show you how you can find and uninstall all those extra COM ports you may have registered from years of microcontroller-hacking. You may have noticed that every time a new FTDI-based board is plugged in, you get a new COM port. You might also get new COM port assignment with adapters, etc. Eventually you can get into pretty high COM port numbers and that can be really annoying! For example, on my 6-month old Windows 7 install I'm already up to COM38! ![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/005/276/medium800/microcontrollers_com38.png?1396821707) At some point you may want to figure out what were all those other COM ports and perhaps uninstall the "ghost" devices. Under windows this isn't particularly easy unless you know how. Luckily, this tutorial will show you how and its really easy once you know! First up, you'll have to open up a **Command Prompt** and in Windows 7 it has to be run as administrator. Open up the start menu and start typing in "Command" until the black C:\ icon appears. Right click and select **Run as Administrator** If you have some other version of Windows, you may not have to run as admin. ![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/005/277/medium800/microcontrollers_runasadmin.png?1396821679) Now type in **set devmgr\_show\_nonpresent\_devices=1** (which is the magic command to show ghost devices) followed by **start devmgmt.msc** (which starts up the device manager) ![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/005/278/medium800/microcontrollers_setdev.png?1396821664) Now you're almost done, select **Show hidden devices** from the **View** menu ![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/005/279/medium800/microcontrollers_showhidden.png?1396821639) Voila! You can now see every COM port you've ever made, and you can also now select which ones you want to uninstall so the COM port number can be recycled ![](https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/005/280/medium800/microcontrollers_hiddenshown.png?1396821618) ## Featured Products ### FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Cable [FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Cable](https://www.adafruit.com/product/70) Just about all electronics use TTL serial for debugging, bootloading, programming, serial output, etc. But it's rare for a computer to have a serial port anymore. This is a USB to TTL serial cable, with a FTDI FT232RL usb/serial chip embedded in the head. It has a 6-pin socket at the end... 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