Printing to a USB printer from a MS DOS application

(A) Windows 2000 and XP -

MS DOS applications are by default designed to print to the LPT port.. To make them work with USB printers, here's what u need to do -

1. Find out if the computer connects to a network or is a stand-alone machine. If it connects to the network, find out the IP ADDRESS of the machine using the ipconfig command and move to step 2. If it is a stand-alone machine, you need to do the following -
- Go to 'Add New Hardware' wizard from the Control Panel.
- After it is done detecting any plug n play devices connected to the computer, choose the option - 'Yes, I have already connected the hardware'. Click Next.
- Choose 'Add New hardware' in the list of devices and click Next.
- Choose the option 'Install the hardware I manually select from the list'.
- Choose 'Network Adapters' in the list that comes up.
- In the next window, choose 'Microsoft' as the manufacturer AND select the 'Microsoft Loopback Adapter' from the list of adapters listed.
- The wizard will copy the requisite files and install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter. Click Finish to end the wizard.
- The IP ADDRESS for the machine would now be - 127.0.0.1

2. Assign the USB connected printer a network name. To do that -
2.1 Note down the Computer Name from System Properties > Computer Name tab
2.2 Go into the Printer Properties from the 'Printers and Faxes' folder and assign a Share Name to the printer from the Sharing tab.
2.3 The printer's network name would be - file://Computer_Name/Share_Name. You can also use file://IP_ADDRESS/Share_Name as the network name. Here, the IP ADDRESS would be the one noted down in the Step 1.
2.4 To verify that the printer's network name has been correctly assigned, open up command prompt and type the command -
C:>net view Computer Name
OR
C:>net view IP ADDRESS
If it shows the printer in the share name, proceed to step 2.

3. Map the printer network name to the LPT1 port. To do so -
3.1 Open up the command prompt and type in the command -
C:>net use lpt1 \\Computer_Name\Share_Name /persistent:YES
OR
C:>net use lpt1 \\127.0.0.1\Share_Name /persistent:YES
3.2 To verify whether the mapping has been done successfully, again use the command
C:>net view Computer_Name
OR
C:>net view IP ADDRESS
If it shows the printer mapped to the LPT1 port, proceed to Step 3.

4. Set the spool settings of the printer (from Printer Properties > Advanced tab) to "Print directly to the printer".

5. Now try to print from the MS DOS application...
Reference URLs -
http://www.decompile.com/dataflex/tips/usb_printer.htm
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/winprint.html

NOTE: Since, the Windows drivers for the printer will be used in the background, you don't need to have any MS DOS drivers for the Printer installed on your computer.




(B) For all Operating Systems (and the only method for Windows 9x and ME systems) -

1. Download and install 'DOSprn' shareware application from the URL -
http://www.dosprn.com/

2. Restart the system AFTER you have installed the application.

3. Try to print from the MS DOS application… The default DOSprn settings are good enough.
Reference URLs -
http://www.sacpcug.org/archives/0306/prc0603.html

NOTE: This program is a shareware. You can use it to print upto 100 documents while it is unregistered. To keep using it beyond that point, you need to register it. A single user license costs $12.95. You can know more about this at -
http://www.dosprn.com/faq.htm#1

The reason, I would not prefer using DOSprn to print from NT-based systems is because we have a free workaround available in the form of the method listed above.