Printing in Parallels 3.0/5582

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by Henry-In-Florida, Jan 19, 2008.

  1. Henry-In-Florida

    Henry-In-Florida Member

    Messages:
    45
    Hi All,

    I recently upgraded to Parallels 3.0 on my Macbook Pro laptop and tried it on my wife's MacBook as well. It seemed fine so we went ahead and bought two upgrade copies. All is fine... Until we tried printing. I dunno why we didn't try before that before buying. It seemed that should have been the least of the problems, with such an assortment of printing options. The thing is that NONE of them work.

    Let me detail...
    On either of the two machines, all our printers work on the Mac side. We have a total of four printers between us, all HP. HP Laserjet 2200dn, HP Photosmart C5250, HP Photosmart C6150, HP Photosmart C8750 are connected through a 100BT router. All are networked, either 100BT wired (C5250 is USB direct connect to MacPro and could be shared but isn't) in the case of all but the C6150, or wireless. I tried all three methods of setting up printing and none including seemingly the easiest (LPT:) work in this build.

    The networked laptop computers are wireless capable or can be plugged in to a network switch. The machine see the printers, can print to them all, and view their set up pages on their respective router ports. Clearly they are working on the Mac in native mode.

    Back when I was on Parallels version 2.x the printers had no trouble. Then there were other issues which rendered it unusable (USB). I found no trouble in Bootcamp and have stayed with that until now. Bootcamp on my MacPro works flawlessly. There the printers are fully installed as TCP/IP ported printers, not as LPT: shared devices as that obviously wouldn't work in a local environment.

    As to LPT for example, set up printing to the Laserjet since that's the easiest, it's not clear to me if the printer on Mac needs to be set to sharing and sharing turned on (I read some instruction to that effect and others that don't mention it). I did NOT have sharing turned on in my first attempt. Is that required? Either way it doesn't work though. What happens in Windows is that the printer installs OK, but the item(s) in XP Control Panel>Printers and Faxes window has the 'Ready' grayed out, and anything sent to that device simply doesn't print.

    Help, please.

    Henry
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2008
  2. jbkendrick

    jbkendrick Bit poster

    Messages:
    7
    Henry,

    Do you have the latest version of Bonjour for Windows installed in your Virtual Machine. If not, this should do the trick, along with sharing your printers on the Mac side. Once you have it installed, you can run the Bonjour Print Wizard from within Windows and it should see all of your Mac printers, networked or otherwise. With Bonjour it is much easier than in a straight up Windows configuration because you don't need to add or configure TCP/IP ports, or anything else. When asked for a language/protocol for your printer, just select Generic / Postscript. BTW, most of this information is on page 121 of the Parallels 3 user guide if you have one. You can read about some of my experiences with installing Parallels and Windows on a MacBook Pro at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/mbp-leopard-install-with-parallels-3/. Good luck, John
     
  3. Henry-In-Florida

    Henry-In-Florida Member

    Messages:
    45
    Thanks for the ideas. I tried using Bonjour version DL from the net (a bit of trouble finding it), but it didn't show all the printers and couldn't figure why. Gave up.

    What finally did work was installing each as TCP/IP local printer, same as using XP native, BTW. After DL of the latest HP printer software, install (again) for each of the types (Laserjet, ColorSmart, All-In-One Color Smart) of HP printers, I was able to manually add the IP address of each printer then select the drivers in Printer & Fax Settings. How XP-like...

    Did have some router issues that may have prevented Bonjour from working properly. Will address the topic of the router RSN (real soon now). My local Comp-USA is going out of business and may be able to pick up a 802.11n router on the cheap...
     

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