Setting up a network printer to print to a local printer port

For some older DOS-based applications that don’t understand network printing, it becomes necessary in the Windows 95/98/NT world to fool the machine into believing that there is a local printer actually attached to the local LPT port.  (While this works fairly well with the text design reports, it DOES NOT work as well with printing the graphics from the screen.  If you need the graphics printed, it is recommended that you obtain an older computer with Windows98 or less and a printer connected directly to the parallel port.)

 

There are two ways to accomplish this task:

 

•                       Creating a batch file on the user’s desktop that they must invoke before running the DOS application.  Obviously this approach is less desirable due to the fact that it relies on the user doing this each time they enter the application.

 

•                       The second way, and more favorable approach is to edit the user’s logon script to map the printer to the user’s lpt1 port.  You would do this much the same way you’d map a network drive using the syntax:

Net use lpt1: \\ "<servername>\<shared printer name>"

 

Note that after doing this, it is NOT necessary to add this printer to the LPT port, whenever an output is sent to that port, it will be redirected to the network printer.  It will also NOT be necessary to make any changes to the printer setup in any Windows-based applications (Word, Excel, etc..) they will continue to use the network queue to print.

 

REMEMBER:  You must map to the share name of the printer, which is not always the same as the queue name.  To find the share name of a printer, go to start/settings/printers and right click on the printer you want to map to, click properties and look in the shared tab to find the “Share Name”.

 

EXAMPLE: My personal system consists of a computer named Clint running Windows XP, connected through a router to three other computers.  One of those computers is named Barb and is running Windows 98.  Connected to the parallel port on Barb is a HP Deskjet 870 CSE, shared as HP-870CSE.  I wrote a batch file for cases where I wanted to use that printer. 

 

net use lpt1:\\ "BARB\HP-870CSE"

f:

cd \ohen2001\programs

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