external hard drive on 2 pc's

hello all..

I installed drivers for a parallel connection 'backpack' external hard drive on a laptop -- and it gets recognized fine by NT.. (pIII, 128 mb ram, 1 cd rom drive..)

However I installed the drivers on a desktop pc (pentium pro, 300+ mb ram, 2 cd rom drives) -- and with the external HD connected and powered off -- it boots right up OK.. But, if I have it connected and powered on, it causes NT to hang at the initial blue screen.. (No dots ever appear from left to right)..

This desktop pc has only 38MB of free space on it's C drive (no D drive); which I know is a problem unto itself.. Someone suggested maybe it's not 'hanging'- it's just working sooo slow because it has no room for the paging file to write... But then someone else said maybe it's a scsi id conflict..

If anyone has any suggestions on what to look for, it would be appreciated.. Thanks.. teemuS

I assume both machines are running the same Service Pack.....

Check the CMOS settings of the LPT port with the working machine against the settings with the machines that is not working and adjust accordingly.

thanks dtiffany for the suggestion.. I'll give that a shot.. teemuS