I used to lose my printer after my computer had been in "sleep" or "power save" mode. Only a reboot would get my printer back online. Now my printer is USB, that does not happen, but I lose the parallel connected scanner in the same way. OS is Win 98SE. I've just changed my motherboard and CPU. so I guess it must be a software problem. The report back on the screen is that the cable is not connected and that's simply rubbish. Any suggestions? Regards, Jennifer

Jennifer. Your parallel port Hexidecimal address in BIOS may be being used by another device. Go into BIOS and change the hex address to a different resource. This is easily done...in most BIOS', there is a drop down box that allows you to set a different resource. The problem probably lies here. You see, BIOS always dictates resources...Windows is forced to obey BIOS. By resetting to a different hex address, Windows will be forced to re-allocate resources. This is not a for-sure thing, as I don't know your personal computer setup. But its worth a shot, and may solve your problem.

Thank you for your reply Jim. I have changed the setting in BIOS 4 times to all the available addresses. The port works fine on all 4 until I enter "sleep" mode, and the same thing happens, Dead Port. Thank you for your suggestion, it was worth a try, Regards, Jennifer

It is a known problem that sleep and other power saving options cause a lot of problems on systems running Win9x. Although it works 99% of the time on my system, the best way to "fix it" is to always have it disabled.

Thank you all, I have solved this by deleting the parallel port in Device Manager and letting Windows reinstall it. All works fine now Regards, Jennifer