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Need to share a Printer from XP mode to Win7 without drivers
A client has a $50'000 blueprint printer that prints on big rolls. It only has drivers for windows xp. He is now upgrading his machines and the company does and will not provide Windows 7 drivers.
I installed XP Mode on Windows 7 and configured it and put it on the same homegroup as all the other machines in the office. I installed the printer after attaching it in windows xp using drivers that came with XP. I can't seem to be able to figure out a way to get the other Windows 7 machines in the office to be able to add it as a printer and to print to it.
When I go to add network printer I see it on all the Windows 7 machines and try to add it. It starts contacting Windows Update looking for drivers, finds none, asks me for them then cancels out when I don't have them. I was hoping to be able to share the printer or setup some sort of redirection from Windows 7 to the shared printer in XP Mode. All the instructions I have seen so far seem to try to help people redirect the LPT port to a network printer shared in Windows 7. I need to do the reverse.
Is there some way to install a dummy printer and then when you select it as the printer redirect to a network printer? Is there a way to force the print rendering to be done in XP so that those drivers are used?
I installed XP Mode on Windows 7 and configured it and put it on the same homegroup as all the other machines in the office. I installed the printer after attaching it in windows xp using drivers that came with XP. I can't seem to be able to figure out a way to get the other Windows 7 machines in the office to be able to add it as a printer and to print to it.
When I go to add network printer I see it on all the Windows 7 machines and try to add it. It starts contacting Windows Update looking for drivers, finds none, asks me for them then cancels out when I don't have them. I was hoping to be able to share the printer or setup some sort of redirection from Windows 7 to the shared printer in XP Mode. All the instructions I have seen so far seem to try to help people redirect the LPT port to a network printer shared in Windows 7. I need to do the reverse.
Is there some way to install a dummy printer and then when you select it as the printer redirect to a network printer? Is there a way to force the print rendering to be done in XP so that those drivers are used?
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Gary Case
... one other thought: Does the program that does the printing have any alternative output formats? There may be an architectural page description language that you could print to, and then run a small utility in XP that would actually render it to the printer ... I'm simply not familiar enough with those applications to know if that's the case or not.
along the lines of what garycase just pointed out,
I was thinking if you could save the file out to a shared directory, you might be able to use a utility like, (on second thought, i think garycase just said this)
http://www.lerup.com/printfile/
http://www.4-tech-engineering.com/software/autoprint/autoprint.htm
to auto print it from the XP virtual box.
I was thinking if you could save the file out to a shared directory, you might be able to use a utility like, (on second thought, i think garycase just said this)
http://www.lerup.com/printfile/
http://www.4-tech-engineering.com/software/autoprint/autoprint.htm
to auto print it from the XP virtual box.
Getting the other Windows 7 machines to be able to send jobs to the XP machine is not a problem. But as you mentioned, getting the drivers for the Windows 7 machines is the issue.
What is the make/model of the blueprint printer?
Since the customer has valid XP licenses, you could convert the existing XP machines to virtuals and just run a virtual machine for that application on each new Windows 7 PC. Probably not what the customer wants, but it would work. (kind of what XP mode is doing now on the one machine)
What is the make/model of the blueprint printer?
Since the customer has valid XP licenses, you could convert the existing XP machines to virtuals and just run a virtual machine for that application on each new Windows 7 PC. Probably not what the customer wants, but it would work. (kind of what XP mode is doing now on the one machine)