NT4 & Tape Drive Problems

[G-Nome]

I have been supplied an old Colorado Jumbo 250MB Tape drive and a tape which I need to recover data from. I successfully set up the tape drive on a Windows 98 PC using the DOS software supplied though the tape has been created using a different program, most likely NT backup. I have hooked up the external Tape drive to our NT4 server via the parallel port but NT is having a hard time auto detecting the drive from the Tape Device Applet in Control panel. The drivers I have downloaded from HP are for NT 3.51 and although I can install the drivers for the device ok, they refuse to start as it can't find any device associated with them? Is it possible to bypass this auto detection process in NT4 and install the tape device manually? I have the required driver files and such I just need to find a button that says add other device, but I can't find one. Anyone able to help me, thanks.

[Ya_know]

Does the parallel port on the server work, or could it be disabled/inoperative? Has it ever been tested with another device? It sounds like BS, I_know, but you have to eliminate the variable...

BTW, HP should have a more current driver…

[G-Nome]

Port is working fine as we had a printer connected to it. I have actually plugged the printer into the tape drive too and it works in this daisy chain configuration also. As for drivers, it is specifically stated on the HP site that they are the only drivers available. They released a patch for these for NT4 however as there was some issue with the 3.51 driver and NT4 SP4? The drivers should work fine it's just getting to a screen that will let me browse to the driver that I am having problems with.

[G-Nome]

Ok, I got this problem sorted out evantually. I did some more digging and discovered that the backup program supplied with Windows 98 supports the drive. After installing the backup program, Windows automatically detected the drive. I was able to recover the data from the tape which was created using the Colorado DOS software, and the other tape which I can only assume used either backup for win98 or NT backup (Are these two formats interchangeable, just out of interest?). Either way the data has been recovered and cut to CD.