No LPT port in Windows 7 virtual machines

Question

Windows 7 has MS virtual PC integrated, the VM settings don't give a parallel LPT port mapping to the physical machine. Where did it go?

Has anyone else noticed this, and found a solution?

Update: After much digging, I found the one and only reference to this issue, on the VPC Blog: "Parallel port devices are not supported, as they are relatively rare today."

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-More details-

It's a XP VM I've been using since VPC 2007 days, which did have this functionality. This is to configure barcode printers via the LPT port. Since the (new) MS VM can't map to my physical LPT port, I'm having a hard time configuring printers.

My physical ports are enabled in the BIOS. It has worked the past 3 years, before switching to Win 7.

Any help is appreciated.

This screen shot of the VM settings shows COM ports, but LPT is no more

In contrast, here is a screen shot of VPC 2007 (before it got integrated into Win 7). Notice how it has LPT support

Answer 1

Virtual Server does allow LPT mappings. While it isn't supported on client versions of Windows I understand it does work (which would be OK for development/test/occasional usage).

Answer 2

With Windows Virtual PC it is possible to edit the VMC parameter file (XML) and add the following lines after the serial ports:

<parallel_port id="0">
    <port_name type="string">LPT1 (378h-37Fh)</port_name>
    <port_type type="integer">1</port_type>
</parallel_port>

So you can have have hardware support for LPT port as before in MS Virtual PC 2007. It works fine with printers and scanners on parallel port.

Answer 3

The only way to get lpt printers run is to install them as network printer within Windows 7, make it available in network and connect it into Windows XP ...

afterwards map the IP of the printer to LPT (via net use) in Windows 7 and there you go.

Answer 4

I found a "sortof" solution. I don't really like it, but it does work for my windows 7, HP deskjet 320 problem.

I have installed the HP deskjet 320, on the Windows 7, with a driver for a HP deskjet 340 monochrome. It worked. Yesterday, I had tried using the driver for the HP deskjet 340 (not monochrome), and the printer could not do a correct test page. Today, it liked the "monochrome" driver well enough to print a correct test page.

After installing the printer on my Windows 7, my virtual XP machine recognized the printer also.

I would still prefer to fix it properly... Would still like to know about the VMC parameter file. Thanks

Answer 5

I am successfully running a Xerox XD100 printer off a parallel port in a virtual machine running Windows XP. I am using an MSI MS-6519 (P45 Neo-F) which has a physical LPT port on the motherboard. Also a good number of Gigabyte motherboards still have an LPT port header on them.

I am using VirtualPC 2007 SP1 under Windows 7 64 bit. In the device manager for the host machine, I set the LPT port to not use any interrupts. In the device manager for the guest O/S, I set the LPT port to use any available interrupt. I had to disable hardware virtualization in the settings for the virtual machine to get the printer to work.

Answer 6

kmonk, This might not be the answer, but is worth a try . . . Have you tried comparing the configuration files between the new and old? I do know that the PC version of VMware supports virtual serial ports using pipes - but the MAC version does not. If, however, you directly edit the vmware configuration file on the MAC you can get it to work just fine. Only the UI doesn't support it - the VM supports it just fine. This was important to me because I wanted to use the kernel debugger between VMs. Its worth a shot looking at . . .