slowing down serial port, maby??

Question

i have a small program, that uses a FileStream (in c#) to read in through the serial port. i have a creative labs infrared reciever on the serial port. when i step through my program ( using breakpoints) , i can recieve signals from my remote sound, but when i run the program normal, it recieves nothing. my theory is that the port is not listening for long enough. does anyone know any way to fix this??this is real urgent as its for a project for college due in real soon.thanks all. i tried changing the bits per second,but that did nothing