DVD & CD-RW Disappear after HP Office Jet 3100 installed on Parallel Port

[TCH]

Hoping someone can help me with this problem. I have a
Dell 4600 PC with a DVD rom and CD-RW running Windows XP
home. When I first connected my HP Office Jet 3100
series printer (via parallel port, printer has no USB
port) and startup my PC, it works fine. But after I
shutdown and startup the PC later it takes a long time to
startup. Eventually I get a black screen with a error
message and the option to chose F1 to continue or F2 to
goto setup. Error message says something about drive not
loaded or recognized. Going F1 or the F2 route I
eventually end up in Windows XP. The problem is that if
I go to My Computer my DVD-Rom and CD-RW drives are not
listed. If I shut down, disconnet the printer and then
reboot everything is fine. Both drives re-appear.

I have loaded the latest drives that I had to order from
HP on a CD. Not available as a download.

Would love to continue using this printer on my new PC.
Thanks!

Regards,
TCH

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

I've heard of disappearing CD drives and bad printers but not usually in the
same posting!

Try Alex Nichol's fix for the disappearing CD drive:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.php#problems

Cari
www.coribright.com