I have 2 pairs of serial devices (a scale and a POS pin pad) hooked up to 2 pcs (4 serial devices in total) with windows xp embedded sp3 (x86) running RDC/rdp 6.0. I am using those machines to RDP into virtual machines running Windows 7 enterprise (x64) where my point of sale software is installed. I need to redirect the local PC's com ports (com1 and com2) over to the virtual machine. I configured the rdp file to send the com ports and it does as I can see the ports if I add a printer (they show up as ts033 and ts034) but the software I am using requires it be called com1 - com10. I have tried to use "net use com3:\device\com1, net use com3:\tsclient\ts033" and a few other combos on my VM to redirect the ts com port to a "real/virtual" one.
I don't have the money to spend on purchasing a serial server (new or used) or purchase the amount of licenses/seats for 3rd party software. Even the cheapest solution from ebay to purchase 4 new serial servers comes out to about $100 plus you have to use 4 wall warts and it involves extra cabling.
My only other option is to get 8 db9 to rj-45 adapters and send this over 4 existing cat5e lines and physically attach them to the vm server. I'd rather avoid having to do this as again it requires running extra cables from the POS terminal/pc as well as running cables from the patch panel to the VM server. I would much rather use the net use method if you could tell me how or some other free/opensource software that is out there.
Let me know if you need any other information or if something is unclear.