I will adjust and award points based on amount of help for each who contributes to the solutions.
A relative has XP Home, am trying to transfer files from an old Win95 puter via an External Iomega Zip 100 Parallel drive, (files are on 2 Zip 100 media disks as Backup Job #1 & #2). He had activated XP long ago, then added his a printer after purchase & activation, then much later an older Scanport 300 scanner, then a digital camera on a USB port (3 hdwre. changes from orig. hdwre config.?) Hehad the wrong drivers for the scanner in, leading to 2 separate (!) points in the device manager. Also file system was @ FAT32, I converted the drive to NTFS. But the following was happening before the conversion also.
I downloaded the correct XPdrivers called for which changed the scanner to be recognized by XP as a Microtek scanner (I think they wrote the XP driver). The scanner & printer now work fine & there are no hdwre. issues there. (I think this would be noticed by XP as a 4th Hdwre. change from activated config.) Also cleaned up the registry & Start up folder. (WinDr. found & fixed 82 errors, most being invalid reg. entries & Active-X files). DiskDr. say?s disk is fine & NTFS.
When I attempted to install the Iomega software, shut down & hooked up the External Zip 100 Parallel via the printer port (w/ or without the printer & scanner attached), and restart, I get a situation of a normal request to boot to XP Home, then it attempts to boot into windows normally, then a screen flash (too fast to read any of the writing) of a blue screen, then it goes into a restart loop (repeat?s), that won’t allow booting into windows. Restore to previous config. brings me out of the event (and allows windows to boot normally), if I shutt down & disconnect the external drive and hook the scanner & printer back up w/out the ZIP drive. (Cont.)