abit bhr parralell port keeps craping out.

Hello.
I have a perplexing problem on my system.
my system refuses to see my scanner or printer either indavidually or together.
it will also not see my parralell zip drive.
i have checked the bios settings, and the printer port is set to epp, ver 1.7, and window 98 recognizez and installs the proper drivers.
i am running an a-bit bh6 board with 64 mb of pc-100 sdram. a celeron 366 which was clocked to 458 mhz. I set it back to default. an ensoniq 64 sound card(creative), banshee w/16 m.b. ram(guillemont)
generic 56k modem, realtek network card(pci)
this is all in an atx case with the headers built right on the board.
my scanner is a scantak 12p, and my printer is an ibm execjet 4072?? inkjet.new cables and i had them both working on my other system 2 days ago.
I have downloaded the newest drivers for both, and there are no conflicts, or anything to indicate a problem.
The worst part, is that this is a new replacement board for an abit-bh6 that had the same problem,was tested, and found to be faulty. what is doing this?? i have no loopback's availible untill monday so any advice would be a boone....thanks.
oh yea, the printer beeps once during post, and then twice when windows initializes it.
thank you in advance.

I just did some research in the resource book
for '98. i did a print job in dos, and it printed to my printer. so i went in and set it to print directly to my printer, caused a fatal exception in the spooler, does this mean i have spooler problems, and would this affect the scanner?

Some printers, and scanners, will not work with the port set to EPP or ECP. Try setting the port to Bi-directional or compatible.

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Are we havin' fun yet?

Thanks grafman. I have spp, epp, epp+ecp listed in my bios, have tried them all.

as another update, I can print in dos if i use the copy /b to lpt1, and i retried my zip drive, and it now works, but the printer and scanner still don't.
any help at all would be appreciated.

uninstall the scanner and its drivers, test the printer then, it may work. Scanner software sometimes grabs controll of the printer port and wil not let any other devices use it. Usual fix when this happens is to install a lava parallel port card and let the scanner use lpt2 off the card.

thanks damned angel, i will give it a try, and let you know,

ok, installed win98 on diffrent drive, installed all the right drivers, and everything works, so it is in the windows98
on my other disk.
so, what in windows 98 could make it come up with error writing to lpt1?, I have checked what i think are the obvious things, And once again i know it isn't hard ware so......
what next?
Oh, i also run a 2-system lan, could that have somthing to do with it? not as up on networks as i would like to be.
thanks in advance.