Can I disable all Serial COM Ports?

Two questions:
1. Can I remove the HID-Compliant Mouse listed with my USB Intellimouse Explorer in the Device Manager? Or is it necessary for the USB mouse.
2. Does my computer need COM1,COM2,or COM3 if I have the following setup (see below)? Are any of the COM Ports required to allow the LPT1 to operate? What does the keyboard use to communicate with the system? Is it a COM port? Which one? (okay, I cheated. That's more than two questions).
Here's my hardware:
USB MS IntelliMouse Explorer
USB 3COM Homeconnect Video Camera
USB Umax Scanner
PCI NIC Client w/Phoneline LAN
Parallel Printer Port LPT1 (ECP) IRQ7, DMA3
Creative SB PCI512 Soundcard
AdvanSys Wide SCSI w/ORB 2.2G Removable Media
Primary Master - EIDE Ultra DMA 66
Primary Slave - EIDE Ultra DMA 66
Secondary Master Plextor CD-R PX-W1210A
Secondary Slave - EIDE Ultra DMA 66
AGP Voodoo-3 2000 Graphics card
ADI Microscan 5 Monitor
AMD Athalon Thunderbird 800mHz
Gigabyte 7ZX motherboard w/VIA KT133 Chipset
256MB SDRAM PC-100
Thanks!

1. RE: Can I disable all Serial COM Ports?
lbyard Oct-25-00 06:52 PM
In response to message 0

The Human Interface Device mouse driver is required. It let’s the mouse work with USB under Windows.
The COM ports have nothing to do with the keyboard or LPT1: Disable them in your computer’s CMOS setup and then remove the drivers in the Device Manger. However, you may have left a MODEM off your list and it may be using one of the ports, probably COM3: If you have a MODEM, check it’s properties and see what COM port it is using. If you don’t have a MODEM delete the COM3: driver. Larry

2. RE: Can I disable all Serial COM Ports?
oldmantook Oct-25-00 08:55 PM
In response to message 1

Thanks Larry for your prompt and helpful reply. No, I don't have a modem inside my computer. I rely solely on my LAN to connect to the Internet through another computer I set up as my server. So I'll go ahead and disable all of the COM ports in my CMOS setup and gain two extra IRQ's!
Thanks again my friend!
OMT