Zip drive causing probs

[Tool Man]

Does anyone know why my Iomega ZIP 250 is making my PC run slow?
I havn't used it for ages (since I had Win 98 ). I now have XP Pro, and decided to give it a bash to see what was on all those old Zip disks.
Since I installed it, DVD playback has become jerky, and even a MIDI file won't play properly......
I know it's the zip, because if I switch it off and reboot, everything is fine again.

Oh, it's an old Parallel port drive BTW......

[thecoalman]

I had a 100mb one that seemed to cause me nothing but grief hooked up to my xp machine. Parallel port, supposedly xp compliant driver etc. I gave up and retired it.

[Jayhawk]

One of the "flaws" in XP is that it completely seizes the parallel port while transfering data. Usually only noticeable with printers when they deliver relatively short bursts of data (I see it with my laser printer but it has 40 meg of storage so it's only a second or two). I can only guess that MS figured parallel was dying (especially for streaming devices).

I have not read of any solution.

[thecoalman]

Now that you mention it I had trouble with a old parallel printer that went out in the trash when I got my new machine.

[xxgriff]

it is actually the parallel port that is slow (and windows does not help, or releive the issue). it was designed to support printers, and changing from ECP/EPP to Bi-Directional may help some (try different settings). the external drives function kind of like a FDD, meaning no DMA/UDMA, and thus the system must dedicate cpu cycles to its functioning at the cost of other threads running at the time.

you can also get a patch from iomega to help this problem, but keep in mind it will never go away, because of the archetecture of the parallel port.

http://www.iomega.com/software/

look for: Parallel Port slow transfer patch

[DVD_Ripper]

Make sure you don't install the entire Iomega Suite. Just install the xp driver. The suite has been know on W2k to cause unrepairable BSOD's. (Due to SCSI Driver glitch)... just use the Zip Parallel driver in case xp has same problem.

[Scottie]

hehe ZIP drives, I have 1 + 7 disks externnl 100 MB I haven't used it in about 4 years and even then I never liked it, give it away.