Printing is ridiculous! Please help - i could loose my job

So i FINALLY talked my boss into getting a mac with parallels because i figured it would be the perfect solution to the bogged down PCs with windows installed on them.. well, Parallels is turning into a nightmare, and their tech support has been no help to me.

My issue is that I have a MacBook with XP and OSX 10.4.5 running parallels 4.0

Now, i have read EVERYTHING i can about printers and parallels, and for a while it was working.. all i did was unplug and replug in the usb printer and choose the OS i wanted to print on.. Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the printer will not print!

I unplug and re-plug and the dialog box asking for COMPUTER or VIRTUAL MACHINE comes up, i choose virtual machine to print from QuickBooks, and nothing.. i click print in my program, make sure that the printer is chosen, and nothing.. it just looks like itprints but it doesnt.. Then when i go into the printer queue, the documents show there.. but i cant reprint them

PLEASE help me

 

Possible fix

http://support.apple.com/downloads/Bonjour_for_Windows

After installing this file I was able to print.
It only worked if I chose Generic as the printer and Generic as the driver.
Selecting my physical printer by name just produced garbage.

One more thing. Be sure to select in the OSX control panel for printers "Share this printer".

Everything else I tried failed.

 

yea.. the bonjour thing just seemed to be a pain. WHY cant it work the way it should. Why cant they simply have a button you click to switch from one to the other??? Why did it work one day, and not the other?

 

Hello, lindsayanng,

If you see some documents stuck in the printing queue, delete them from there (there should be such an option under File or Edit - depends on the printer. Note, some docs might still bee present after that). Next, please switch your printer off (it has some kind of power button) and then back on. If the documents disappeared, open the QuickBooks and try to print again. Do not forget to choose correct printer.

 

I have done that

I have done that, it was the first thing on my list because i had printer troubles way back when WITHOUT parallels, it was something that windows always frustrated me with.. I once failed a class because my printer would not work..

But anyways, the FIRST thing i did was clear the documents from queue and restart the printer.. Then on restart it would ask with machine, computer or virtual, i would pick virtual and thats that.

 

Dear lindsayanng,

Please, connect your printer to Mac and make it shared with Windows as recommended in the artile:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/5783

Note, at this case you need to transfer your printer to Mac, not to virtual machine when asked.
Also, please, delete all other printers from your virtual machine except this very shared and do not forget to specify this printer when sending document to the queue.

 

I will try that tomorrow first thing in the morning..

I just can not believe that this is such an issue!

 

OSX 10.4.5?? You need 10.4.11 (at least) for PDM4 to work well.

 

The dog ate it

Thanks for this post - this helps with the remaining issue after migrating parallels to the backup computer over the weekend.

Using the "It printed but the dog ate it" excuse doesn't really work like it used to...

 

i'm sorry, isnt 10.4.5 above 10.4.11?? Maybe i'm stupid, but i would think that this computer DID meet the requirements for OS...

 

What's higher? a 5 or a 11? (Or did you mean 10.5?)

Just use Software Update to update your OS X 10.4, the latest version of 10.4 is 10.4.11, the latest version of 10.5 is 10.5.6.

 

System Requirements.

 

I was thinking that .5 is higher than .11 I forgot that those numbers are not decimals.