Cannot Print in XP Virtual Mode

[Norman Litell]

Following the advice given in my previous post on installing an HP Printer on the Virtual PC, it all seems to work correctly -- EXCEPT -- when I print, everything gets spooled, looking at the documents in the queue it says the first one is printing, but the printer itself never starts physically printing. However, when I close and restart the Virtual PC environment, everything in the print queue is then printed.

The printer is connected over a wireless network, and also installed in the W7Pro host environment where it works properly.

In the Virtual PC environment, the Print Spooler service is set to start automatically, and the Printers Properties Advanced tab has the following items set on:
[*] Always available
[*] Spool print documents
[*] Start printing immediately
[*] Print spooled documents first
[*] Enable advanced priting features

How can I get the system to print in real-time instead of having to close and re-open the Virtual PC.??

[KatherineYH]

Please install the printer driver in XP mode.
Furthermore, you can refer this like to print from XP mode:
Scenario 3: Print from a virtual machine.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... S.10).aspx

[Norman Litell]

This printer WAS installed in XP mode -- otherwise I couldn't be trying to print -- it would not show up in the list of printers installed in XP mode. And this problem applies to more than one printer -- I have several printers installed under the XP virtual machine, connected to different networks at different locations, and the same problem exists with all.

[masterus]

small question: why did you decided to use XP Mode?
with VMware Player (it's free ) you wouldn't have such a issue...

rgds

[Norman Litell]

I elected to use XP Mode because I have a number of very old applications with lots of data stored that will not run under W7. Also, I was still running Outlook Express for my email, I very much like OE and didn't want to bother changing all of my email to another syste, such as Outlook. And finally, my old computer had a problem, I had to buy a new ThinkPad and needed to get back up and running ASAP, and it was faster to just install XP Mode and copy all the files over from my old hard drive without the need to fiddle with and learn new application interfaces at the same time. I may try to migrate away from XP Mode in the future, but for now I need to keep running it. And I don't know anything about VMWare Player -- thanks for the suggestion though -- I will look into it.