The latest AppSrvCE platform, v1.23, includes ELO USB and serialtouch screen drivers. COM1 is allocated by the touch screen serialdriver, whether or not a serial touch screen is actually present. As aresult COM1 is not available to any other application.
To disable the ELO touch screen it is necessary to edit the registrykey HKLM/Hardware/Devicemap/Touch/ComPort and change the name to anunused or nonexistent port (e.g., COM7). This will prevent COM1 frombeing used for the touch screen.