Cannot Get Mac Default Printer to Be Seen as Default in W7

[parleyscanyon]

Thanks in advance for any guidance you may lend. I'm running Windows 7 as a guest under VMWare Fusion 3.1.1. I can print from my OS X 10.6.4 apps without a problem. I've been trying to print from the W7 side, but unless I first go to Virtual>USB and select Connect Brother Printer, I cannot print successfully from within W7. Instead, print jobs go into the queue and just sit there. If I do actively connect the printer, everything seems fine. But it's my understanding that my Mac default printer should also be recognized as my Windows default prtr if I have the the Enabled and Match the default printer on the Mac printer settings turned on. What am I missing?

[gbullman]

I find that the ThinPrint facility frequently does not sync up with the host as far as printers are concerned on its' own. What I do to fix that when it occurs is to open Printers and Faxes in the Guest and delete any TPAutoConnect Printers (those ending in #some_number). In your case if you have set up the USB printer in the Guest delete that too as a test to see if you can get the pass through printing to work. I have written a little Windows command file (ends in .cmd, not .bat) that I run to reset the TPAutoConnect service. I have a short cut to this script in my Quick Launch bar to make it easy to run. The contents of the command file / script are;

@echo off

echo "Shutting down TP AutoConnect..."

call net stop "TP AutoConnect Service"

pause

echo "Starting TP AutoConnect..."

call net start "TP AutoConnect Service"

pause

The 2nd pause is kind of unnecessary, I just have it there so I'll see any errors. The 1st pause gives everything a chance to exit and clean up, I usually wait 10 seconds or so after "Press any key to continue..." to hit a key and start up the TPAutoConnect service.

I do all of this on XP Virtual Machines, but I believe this will still work in Windows 7.

Let me know how you make out.

[parleyscanyon]

Thanks, gbullman. I'll try that, but I'd still like to see it work as advertised. I think I have everything set the way it is supposed to be.

[gbullman]

I move my VMs between hosts (in fact between host platforms; sometimes Fusion on my Mac, sometimes Player on a Windows XP host) and my printers never seem to catch up without the workaround I described above. What is supposed to happen is TPAutoConnect should delete all the existing auto created printers and then create what the current host has installed on each startup of the VM, but that just doesn't seem to happen.

The deleting of the printers ahead of time may be unnecessary, and once you get those commands set up for easy access it isn't a big deal. If you tend to always run the VMs on one host you may only need to do this once.

Consider marking this helpful or answered if it works out for you.