Using USB with Serial Tower

[formatc1702]

hey!

now thats a quick reply!
one thing i forgot to mention: i also have an old vaio laptop WITH a serial port but it doesnt work either! i have no idea why, if anybody has a quick solution please post it!!! its a vaio pcg-fx776
for those who cant come up with a solution so far:
the fan for the processor of that pc doesnt seem to be working, it gets really hot if you leave it on.... there is no crashing or instability, but i think thats the reason why my sound card and my internal modem dont work anymore... they have completely disappeared from my device manager the serial port still appears, but the ir tower is not detected by the lego software... the config of the port (baud rate, parity, ...) is exactly the same as on a friend's pc where everything works fine (a compaq desktop) if anyone knows a solution here, i will be thankful too!