Your printer port might have stopped working, but the serial bus that it runs on is probably not completely dead. If you can pop the case and check the connectors...check obvious stuff like make sure pin one is in the right place. Then I'd attack software stuff. Take the ISA I/O board out, it may complicate troubleshooting. Boot your OS in safe mode if it's win 95/98 and look for ghost drivers for LPT1. Remove all of them no matter what and see if Windows will redetect them. If it does, you'll know the bus is most likely working and you may have a bad DB25 connector on there... So...don't give up.