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vmwareuser274
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-30-2009 10:48 AM

Workstation 7 and "Virtual Printer" - how does this work?

Hi all,

I have installed Workstation 7 now and I was trying to get the new "Virtual Printer" feature working with an existing XP x86 VM.

I have removed the old VMWare Tools and installed the ones coming with Workstation 7.

It looks like the printer drivers for the ThinPrint layer are installed, and the TPVM: Port the virtual printer should be connected to is also there.

But - that's basically it. The VMWare Tools do not install a printer, neither does printing work for me when I manually install a printer connected to TPVM: with either the "Standard Output Gateway" or the "Standard Output Gateway PS" Version.

Documentation and googling didn't help.

Can somebody please point me to where I am wrong?

Thx

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3 Replies
Nils_Dacke
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-02-2009 12:39 AM

I had the same problem. Enabled Virtual Printer in my 6.5.3 clients, upgraded VMWare Tools, but none of the host printers showed up. Searched the documentation and found no information. After trial and error I discovered that the default VMWare Tools installation does not install the ThinPrint driver in the client (must be a bug). I had to make a reinstall of VMWare Tools (VM | Reinstall VMWare Tools...), select "Modify", open up "VMWare Device Drivers" and change "Thin Print" to "This feature will be installed on local hard drive" and let the installation finsh. Finally after rebooting (necessary) my client, the host printers showed up.

Hopefully, this will help you too.

To VMWare - please fix the VMWare Tools installation and update the documentation to be more precise on what is required to have the virtual printer feature work.

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JasonJoel
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-13-2009 10:38 AM

Thank you! Those steps worked for me as well.

Was really annoying me... And you are right, VMware needs to 1.) fix the driver install, 2.) have more verbiage on how to setup/troubleshoot.

Jason

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vmwareuser274
Contributor
Contributor
‎11-17-2009 02:43 AM

Thanks, Nils.

This was the part I was missing.

Upgrading the installed VMWare tools by default does NOT install the ThinPrint printer drivers.

One has to either uninstall the existing VMWare Tools and then install the new ones (then the ThinPrint drivers are installed without chosing them explicitly) or like you say do a custom install and there explicitly choose the installation of the ThinPrint drivers.

Best,

Tobias

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