Most of the time this ends up being a port setting problem.
Restart>Enter Bios set-up>change LPT port settings.
I don't recall what those settings are off hand, but you can try different settings until it works. There was a secondary setting to ECP, that I know I needed to change in Bios set-up, to get my Dual Power programmer to work on my old laptop.
1. Run software 0.97ja 2. Connect the USB cable. 3. The VDD yellow LED should be ON. (This confirm the power is working.) 4. Connect the data cable 5. Click on Test Hardware from the software it should detect the hardware.