Net Use LPT1... not working for a local usb printer on Win7 64 bit

[drw]

Hi,

My main customer, after I made some needed clean up and prep work, recently has moved from a legacy programming development (16 bit) to 32-bit development software and now we are replacing our XP workstations with Win7's, 64 bit.

Our standard way of printing in the legacy apps has been to create a prn file in the same network folder that the applications reside and then issue a net use lpt1... at the command prompt to map whatever printer we need. And then copy the prn file to lpt1. This has worked great with XP and still does with our network printers from Win7 but not our local printers.

I was getting the create error concerning lpt1.prn, I have trapped the error in the software but still I cannot get control of the situation with proper administrator privileges. Our app is run in a folder on our Win 2003 server and our net use lpt1... commands include the user name and password for a user with administrator rights that has been assigned on the server itself.

Do I have to use a user name and password for the local Win7 workstation instead to get this to work? It has worked for years on the XP's with no problem.

The Win7 workstation does not have a parallel LPT1 port. The printer is attached via USB.

Any help you might be able to give to point me in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Don

 

[Fixer1234]

Try sticking the prn file in the spool directory for the printer.

 

[drw]

Thank you for your response.

Because of time constraints I set the "local printer" up as a network printer and the program has no trouble with the "net use lpt1..." / copy {filename} to LPT1 method.

But maybe the next win7 workstation I can explore this more and try to get around this problem and look into what you are suggesting.

Thanks again,

Don