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neilmccabeFlag for United States of America

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How to get lpt1 dongle to work with windows xp mode in windows 7

I have a 32bit app that won't run on my windows 7 64bit. I want to use windows xp mode to access the app but the app requires a parallel dongle. I can't get that mode to see the host's parallel port. The host itself sees it just fine. Any ideas?
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ptpeterson
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You might want to consider getting a Centronics / Parallel > USB converter.  We use them here and they work great for older printers that don't have USB built in.
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You might also consider trying Sun's VirtualBox or VMWare (though you'd need to purchase a license for the guest OS), but both VirtualBox and VMWare have free versions available and might support LTP ports.
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Rant32

The LPT/USB converter may work, depending on the dongle, and it's by far the cheapest option to try.

If that doesn't work, have you contacted the application vendor to see if they can replace your LPT key with a USB one?

If you say that the 32-bit app doesn't run on x64, is that solely because of the dongle, or does it have other issues in 64-bit systems? I'd inform with the vendor to see if their software can run on x64 at all.

VMware Workstation will redirect a parallel port from the host, but it's a rather expensive solution for working around 1995's copy protection technology.

My first suggestion would be to contact the vendor.
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ASKER

no offense to anyone but all these answers are workarounds that I already know exit. Does anyone know for sure if xp mode works with parallel ports?
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Todd Gerbert
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Based on these answers I have given up on making it work with xp mode. I did use a parallel to usb dongle that works just fine for printing in xp mode to an LPT port but it won't work with the key. I think the key is the issue here. I have to find another way. Maybe a PCIX parallel card in the esx host server might allow for the app to be run from a virtual machine and I can have the users RDP into to.