MacDrive 98 on Win2000: don't do it!

Last summer when I got my new Dell workstation at my office, I installed my toolbox of software and hardware on the new machine. I ran into a problem while trying to install my Nikon Coolscan III. The Windows 2000 driver didn’t appear to install correctly. I couldn’t get the scanner working, so I simply installed it on my Mac G4 instead. But since that day, I have been unable to do a graceful shutdown or restart of my Windows 2000 machine. When I attempted to shut down or restart, I would get a dreaded “blue screen of death” with errors indicating a driver failure. I’ve always attributed this to the failure of the Nikon driver to install properly.

This past weekend, I discovered the real culprit. When attempting to retreive some files off a Mac-formatted ZIP disk at home, I installed MacDrive 98. I proceeded to copy the files off the disk without problem, but when I attempted to shut down the machine later that day, I suddenly found the same driver error I had been experiencing at the office was now crashing my machine at home. After uninstalling MacDrive 98 (both at home and the office), my “blue screen of death” crashes have disappeared completely.

So here’s my community service entry for computer geeks this month (because I know I’ll get search hits for the terms “Windows 2000″ and “MacDrive 98″): don’t install MacDrive 98 on a Windows 2000 machine. They do not play nicely together. I’ve had no trouble installing any other software written for Windows NT on either of my Windows 2000 machines — until now. The new version of the software — MacDrive 2000 — is written for Win 95/98/ME/NT and 2000, and I already have it on order. It’s a great program if you have to transfer files between operating systems, and it’s a necessary tool until the Microsoft Gestapo realizes that adding compatibility for Mac-formatted disks would be a useful feature for Windows users. (Yeah, I’m not holding my breath on that one, either!)