Installing an old legacy printer in VMware

[gentilr]

Can anyone help me with this? I've exhausted my online research and troubleshooting with no success.

I have an old Dell 3010cn laser printer that still works great but has stopped working properly with Windows 10.  I would like save my printer from going to landfill. I was hoping I could install it in my Virtual Machine which is running Windows XP, which is compatible with the printer. I've done the same thing successfully with an old HP scanner, however I am unable to install the Dell 3010cn printer drivers in VMWare.

When I plug the printer into the PC, VMWare detects it and I select "connect to virtual machine." However, the Windows XP OS in VMWares does not detect it and I am unable to install the printer drivers.

Using the Add Printer Wizard seems to progress nicely until the very end when I click finish it says "The printer driver was not installed. The operation could not be completed."

Here are my specs: VMWare Workstation Player 15 (personal user) running Windows XP, printer connected to Lenovo laptop via USB in home office. 

[scott28tt]

Thread reported, moderators should now move it to the Workstation Player area since this has nothing to do with a vSphere security advisory.

[gentilr]

Oops, sorry for posting this in the wrong topic area. I am totally lost in this VMWare Communities forum and cannot find the right spot to post it.

[bluefirestorm]

Have you tried downloading the drivers from the Dell website and install it manually on the XP VM?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/dell-3010cn/drivers

You should download from the host machine though (not from the XP VM) and transfer the downloaded package to the XP VM using either copy/paste or through USB thumb drive. This is because web browser(s) on XP will unlikely be able to connect to modern https websites and/or it is not a good thing to expose such an old unsupported OS to the public internet.

[gentilr]

Thank you for the reply. Yes I have tried that already, just as you described.

[bluefirestorm]

If the host machine still has a USB 2.0 port, try connecting to that port. In past versions (12.x or earlier), a workaround for older USB device recognition problems was to put a USB 2.0 hub in between the USB port on the host and the device.

Otherwise, it looks like there is a network port on this printer.
https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_printers_main/esuprt_printers_color_laser/del...

But this network option goes back to exposing the XP machine to possible vulnerabilities as when printer network port is used (such as connecting it to the home router directly), it means the XP VM will also be using bridged networking and also have public internet access. If I am not mistaken, printer sharing via network would be using SMB v1.0 protocol which is what made the XP machines vulnerable to the WannaCry attack some years back.