Thank you MIke. I was using the port number to manage the remote RR1258MKii. It's not needed for normal use :-)
SOLVED...
1. I found an old 2011 post which says that ARCP-480 does not work with virtual COM ports. So I loaded HRD 6.x
2. RR1258 (remote) set COM2 to 9600 8n1
3. In RR Micro, I set COM 2 to mode 4 and virtual port 2
4. In HRD, I set COM2 to 9600 8n1 and Kenwood
It now works... However, it took me quite a while to uncover all of this. I highly suggest that you "sticky" messages that instruct users how to configure RR1258, RR-micro and HRD (or other apps) to work. It would save lots of aggravation.
I lost quite a bit of time trying to get ARCP-480 to work. If SOMEWHERE is was clearly noted that this app does not support virtual ports, it would have been great. These new crop of laptops no longer have COM ports :-)