Hey everyone I need some very specific help with VMWare printing.
I have to first off, apologize for the length of this but I believe it will make it easier to answer.
So far this is what I am using player for......
I have one program that works perfectly on win98se because it uses a printer port dongle for security.
I am using Player 3.1.3 build-324285 to run Win98SE that is used only for this one program and it works perfectly (except printing)
Now later versions came out that added the ability to print to the host printer, however the version I am using seems to be the very last version that allows my program to correctly access the security dongle (it is a LPT1 Aladdin dongle and I am not sure why none of the newer versions will not detect it.)
I tried newer versions and found one that did find the dongle but the print to host printer I could not get to work correctly. I believe it is because I cannot find a printer driver that will work in Win98se for my printer, the best I can find is for Win XP home.
I have worked with networking for many years and I know that Novel Networking has a driver that sends raw data to the host from the guest then the host converts that raw data into the printer driver and prints so you do not have to have the printers driver loaded on all of the other computers.
Currently I get around this printing problem by printing to a vector PDF file on the guest (win98se machine), then move that PDF to the Host (Win XP machine) then print it, but as you may guess this is getting annoying quickly.
Is there some way of sending the print output from my guest win98se machine directly to the printer without finding a printer driver that is written for Win98se for that exact printer, and keep the ability for the guest program on the Win98se machine to still find the security dongle?
You may say, why don't I simply buy the Win XP version of the program and skip the player. The big problem is thee is no difference between the way the two versions of the program works, but the only thing they changed in the program was the security dongle access for Win XP, but the company refuses to sell me a new copy for XP for anything less than full price, and that is just over nine hundred dollars. I refuse to be held hostage by a company unless they made a lot of changes other than simply protecting their software.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this strange situation, maybe is there a way to get the lpt1 port to recognize exactly like it did in Win98se but by using a driver on Win XP? MicroSoft tells me that the LPT access is totally different in XP than it was in 98se and was changed because of security issues. Actually the program loads and runs fine on XP but only until it checks for the security dongle then it craps out with a (cannot find security device) error message, and it seems to do that often enough that you can't really do hardly anything until it craps out.
I am open for any ideas anyone can give me so I can print directly from this program.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read all of this, you can reach me at ProfBuck@BearWebDesigns.com or versitalbear@yahoo.com
Buck