I bought cnc from china, I put it together and followed a setup tutorial on youtube. My motors x,y,z won't work. Here is what I've tried and done.

Dell tower 64x running windows 8
Installed a pci parallel port card and installed the driver.
Probed conections on breakout board from parallel plug in and read 5v.
0v on all motor outputs.
PCI address is CFF8-CFFF i put CFF8 in port #2 setup box and marked the check box.
I entered the right pinout and setup from the manufacturer.
Made sure e-stop was working

Im not good with computers so i feeling like I'm missing something that i would never be able to find. Does anyone have any suggestions? Ive tried contacting the manufacturer but they haven't bee any help.

Mach3 is a 32 bit program.
Here are the system requirements from the web site.


"Software Requirements
Mach3 Minimum Recommended Requirements:
Requirements if using the parallel port for machine control:

    Desktop PC (Laptops are not supported) with at least one parallel port
    32-bit version of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (64-bit versions will not work)
    1Ghz CPU
    512MB RAM
    Non-integrated Video Card with 32MB RAM(Large G-code files, especially 3D files will require a video card with 512MB RAM or higher)

Requirements if using an external motion device for machine control:

    An appropriate external motion controller (options can be found on the Plugins page)
    Desktop or Laptop with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8
    1Ghz CPU
    512MB RAM
    Video Card with 32MB RAM(Large G-code files, especially 3D files will require a video card with 512MB RAM or higher)"

okay so if i get windows 7 with 32 bit software it should work?

That's a bit of a loaded question in regards to the Chinese machines, but yes you should be in a better place than you are at the moment.
I'm assuming your PC is dedicated to the machine. If so, make sure all your screen savers, power/sleep settings and update settings are turned off. You don't want the PC to be going to sleep or doing updates while the machine is running.
I run XP on mine, so can't give you any real advise on Windows 7 set up.

thanks! I really appreciate the quick responses and the help.

A 64 bit OS will work with an external motion controller, just not the printer port.  A smooth stepper of my favorite the UC100 or UC300. 
External motion controllers have their advantages and disadvantages.  One good thing is that computers with printer ports are hard to come by these days.  So USB or Ethernet can be used for communication to the electronics.

My biggest pet peeve about an external motion controller is that they utilize a buffer, so pressing feed hold..... the machine will not instantly stop, it has to finish the pulses in the buffer then stop or loss of position will occur.