I have found the solution to my Epson Printer Port problem and am
posting it in case anyone else ever has a similar problem…at least it
will be in the archives, though as you will see it turned out to be a
fairly esoteric problem.
I noticed that the problem that I had posted about the Epson Printer
Port error message several posts back occurred about 95% of the
time…but not every time I booted up. I also noticed that the programs
that were in my system tray would start up in variable order and
thought that perhaps one of these system tray or other ‘background'
programs were somehow conflicting with the Epson Printer Port at
startup but that every so often they would start in an order whereby
the Epson Printer Port was somehow OK.
So I ran msconfig and basically inhibited all the background ‘stuff'
from starting at boot and I stopped getting the error message. Then,
one by one, I added each background program to startup and rebooted
until I found the one startup program that was causing me to get the
error message. It was called ‘SBDrvDet'. I then went to a reference I
had downloaded from the internet that tells the purpose of every known
startup program that runs in the background. Turns out that SBDrvDet
is "Detects the ‘Easy Front Panel' Audio Connectivity Drive Internal
Drive Bay on the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum ex." Can be disabled
if you don't have one was the advice given in the reference." Well, I
don't have one, but I do have an Audigy sound card. I disabled the
SBDrvDet from loading at startup in msconfig and the problem is now
gone and I still have sound…though I guess I will never be buying the
Easy Front Panel :>).
So now it is in the archives as a reference in case anyone else has
the same problem.
Howard
