Windows Hangs on ECP (Parallel Port) Detection

Hi all

My system runs both Windows 98 SE and Windows XP Professional SP2 (dual boot). Recently, I formatted my HDD and installed Windows 98 on the master partition. Everything works fine except whenever Windows 98 detects a ECP printer port, it will lock-up my whole system. This doesn't happens in Windows XP.

My configuration is as follows:

- An iomega 250 parallel port ZIP drive connected to the parallel port on my mainboard. The printer is connected to the Iomega ZIP drive.

Previously (before I formatted), everything seems to work fine (IE: the system acknowledge the use of ECP port and the zip drive works fine). When I tried changing the parallel port mode to Bi-dir and Normal in CMOS, Windows 98 doesn't lock-up my system. It is only in ECP mode that it hangs.

I prefer to use ECP mode because I can achieve faster transfer rate for my ZIP drive (I have tested it out).

Any ideas?

 

I managed to troubleshoot the issue. For those who are interested, here's how I did it:

I went to device manager and disabled the 'Printer Port (LPT1)'. Followed by, I used the "Add New Hardware" wizard and opted to add 'ECP Printer Port (LPT1)' manually. By doing so, Windows will add the new item into Device Manager.

In order to test if the system will lock-up again, I did not change my CMOS parallel port mode to ECP. Hence, after restarting the system and returning to Windows 98, Windows will re-detect that the CMOS is still set to use 'Printer Port (LPT1)'. With this, I proceed to do another system restart but this time round, I enabled ECP parallel port mode in CMOS.

By doing so, windows will NOT lock-up again since I have manually added the ECP Printer Port (LPT1) earlier. In this case, I have by-passed the automated ECP port detection and the Printer Port (LPT1) can be safely removed.

I have tested to ensure that there are no problems by transfering files to & from my ZIP drive. So far, everything seems to be running smoothly.

 

Thank you, for posting how you fixed your problem.

 

Don't mention, markp62