You appear to say that you did have it running on the laptop, once.
If you have a printer - one with a 25 pin port - then (apart from saving it for posterity) check to see if the printer port still works. The trouble is with laptops is they do tend to share the memory about the various functions of the machine.
I run my system on a laptop, a full function Toshiba, but this appears to have no sharing whatsoever, and it works very well.
I would try to check the port - as Hood says, you can try it with a voltmeter - and you should detect the voltage changes, particularly on the step pins,(check the voltage between the step pins and the GND pins (18 - 25)) or try a printer on it. Another problem with laptops is that sometimes the output voltage is only 3.5 volts, not the full 5 volts, and this is not enough to drive some drivers.