Why wont a PC boot if a printer is attached?

[Maximilian]

I saw the "my mom borrowed my pc and busted it up" thread and that reminded me theres a problem with my parents comp that i never solved. Heres the specs:

Socket 754 gigabyte matx mobo AGP
Sempron 2800+
1GB pc2700 DDR1
9800 PRO
80GB seagate HDD

I can probably get more detailed specs if needed, like what the motherboard actually is.

So basically the problem is that whenever the printer is plugged in, it wont boot. It stops at the part where the hard drive model and size usually pop up at the first screen you see. The processor speed appears, i think the memory amount appears but the hard drive never pops up, but sure enough when i unplug the printer "80GB Seagate model number" appears and it proceeds to the next few screens and the boots into windows. Why does this happen? Is it trying to boot from the printers card slots or detect them? They assure me "boot from other device is turned off" in the BIOS, suppose i should check this personally at some point though.

This never used to happen. It may be unrelated but i swapped a geforce 4 TI 4400 for the 9800 PRO that is in it now, and either right away or shortly after the printer issue started happening.

Any ideas?

 

[Zepper]

Is the printer on a USB or Parallel port? Maybe you have a driver problem (old or not completely installed or damaged), a short in the cable (I always replace the cable to check just because they are so danged cheap) or somewhere, etc. There is a site that will check the status of your drivers for free - a link is on majorgeeks.com - just go into any program listing and you'll see the link at the lower left of the header (has a Magnifying Glass icon) . IDK why they don't put the link right out in the open like the Kaspersky scan link... It will tell you what you need, then you can go get them. If you pay for their service, they will get the drivers for you.

When I run up against something like that, I'll often go into Device Manager and remove the device (port or whatever) and let Win reinstall it. Sometimes that'll fix the problem - and certainly shouldn't make it worse.

.bh.

 

[CurseTheSky]

That reminds me of a computer I was fixing for someone. They had an older (Serial Port) printer, and a newer USB printer, as well as a USB wifi card. When the USB AND Serial printer were plugged in, the wifi card wouldn't connect to the Internet. When only one printer was attached, everything worked fine.

I finally had to walk out of there saying sorry, but they'd either have to call in a "real expert," or just use one printer or the other. I'm not sure if it's even relevant to today's hardware / operating systems, but could it be an IRQ problem?