Unable to access serial ports on a VM

Hi,

I'm using VMWare Server 2 on a Windows 2003 server. This server has a Digiboard device, a box with 16 serial ports connected to the computer via a serial connection :

Server ---> com 1 / com 2 -

> Digiboard -

> 16 serial ports

Everything works fine on the server, i can use the serial ports (which have modems at their backs). I'd like to dispatch the serial ports to 3 virtual machines and leave 4 to the physical one. I've set up a new 2003 virtual machine with the following configuration :

serial0.present = "TRUE"

serial0.fileType = "device"

serial0.fileName = "COM7"

serial0.tryNoRxLoss = "FALSE"

serial0.autodetect = "FALSE"

serial0.startConnected = true

serial0.allowGuestConnectionControl = true

serial1.present = "TRUE"

serial1.fileType = "device"

serial1.fileName = "COM8"

serial1.tryNoRxLoss = "FALSE"

serial1.autodetect = "FALSE"

serial1.startConnected = true

serial1.allowGuestConnectionControl = true

serial2.present = "TRUE"

serial2.fileType = "device"

serial2.fileName = "COM9"

serial2.tryNoRxLoss = "FALSE"

serial2.autodetect = "FALSE"

serial2.startConnected = true

serial2.allowGuestConnectionControl = true

serial3.present = "TRUE"

serial3.fileType = "device"

serial3.fileName = "COM10"

serial3.tryNoRxLoss = "FALSE"

serial3.autodetect = "FALSE"

serial3.startConnected = true

serial3.allowGuestConnectionControl = true

Everything is up (i can see the serial ports are conencted on the VMWare interface and in the VMtools), but I don't see any COM ports on the virtual server. All I have is the usual COM1, COM2, LPT1. Moreover, the applications I have on the server which normally use com ports to communicate don't see these 4 ports.

Does anyone have an idea to make this work ?

Thank you !

Nicolas