Network printer connection to Fusion

[ewlon]

I can't get my HP2100 network printer to work from any program within my Fusion partition on my Macbook. I'm connected to the LAN, and I can ping it from within the command screen of XP ProS2. I installed the driver for the printer when I installed XP into Fusion. Connecting to the LAN, to the internet, and even to the VPN at my remote company headquarters works fine, although I can't print on the printer there, either. The tutorial on printers on VMware's help page doesn't seem to run for me on any PC/Mac that I have even with MSIE, Netscape, Firefox or Safari. Can anyone give me some help or hints or when to go to get help on this?

Grey

[MandarMS]

Try changing the Virtual Machine Network to Bridged. The default is NAT,

Note: you need to restart the VM to get the IP address in Bridge

[ewlon]

No joy. Cannot ping any other device on the LAN with Bridged checked. Can ping with NAT checked, including the printer in question. The Network Connections window says I'm connected with device name VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter on that LAN when in NAT. I reinstalled the HP2100 drivers from the original HP disc, changing from those within WinXP. No joy. Any other ideas?

[jfriesne]

If you can print from the Mac side, and you can ping your Mac from then Windows guest, then you could always enable printer sharing on your Mac and have the PC guest print to the Mac's shared printer.... you'll probably need to download Adobe's Universal Generic PostScript printer driver to do that. Then it's just a matter of specifying the correct network URL for the printer driver to connect to.... something like http://macs_ip_address:613/printer_name

[ewlon]

Thanks for the tip, but that seems a round-about way to do something that surely VMware has corrected.--something as basic as printing to a networked printer. Thank you for your suggestion, and I'll try it, but if anyone has a less "hop on one leg, blink your eye, and whistle" way to solve this, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Anyone have an idea of why I can't play the on-line Fusion Printer Installation video, even on trying with different computers, OSs and browsers?

[admin]

Anyone have an idea of why I can't play the on-line Fusion Printer Installation video, even on trying with different computers, OSs and browsers?

Disable pop-up blockers and enable javascript and cookies?

[admin · Accepted solution]

Anyone have an idea of why I can't play the on-line Fusion Printer Installation video, even on trying with different computers, OSs and browsers?

Eric (above) is on the right track. Specifically, it's your pop-up blocker. Tell your browser to allow pop-ups from mylearn.vmware.com , and you'll be good to go.

[ewlon]

Well, that worked for the training piece, maybe I'll figure out what

to do to get the printer to work.

Thanks to both Brian and Eric.

[roz40love]

as far as watching the tutorial, you need to turn off the pop up menu or it won't let you watch it.. sometimes, holding the control button while choosing to play it will do it.. as far as printing issues, i have had the same. change it to bridge and download the apple bonjour software (free). it should find the printer.. i was able to get one printer going, but still having a problem with the other..

[LoRob]

Important for Laptop Users (MacBook, MacBook Pro) With No Physical Connection to a Printer:

If you are having problems with a network printer on a wireless network and you are dealing with a laptop that doesn't have any physical connection to another machine , save yourself some time:

1. Before you start your virtual machine (VM), in your virtual machine settings, set network to 'Bridged' instead of 'NAT'. My VM was Vista Premium Home.

2. Start up your VM, open your browser and download Bonjour for Windows from:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/Bonjour_for_Windows

3. Install Bonjour, and follow the prompts for it to find the printers on your network. You may or may not need to install a printer driver.

I spent a good day trying to troubleshoot how to connect to my D-Link wireless network with a Brother HL-5250DN printer, and all I needed to do was use Bonjour.

Prior to installing Bonjour, with my Network setting on 'NAT' I could not enable my network printer - I would click on 'Enable Printers' but it would uncheck the selection after about 2 seconds, so that I was unable to use "All printers installed on the Mac will be automatically added to the virtual machine".

This information is for network printers (i.e. your printer is connected physically to your wireless router, not shared, where the printer is connected to either the same computer, as in a desktop computer with physical wired connections to printers). Otherwise, you may find the NAT setting to share printers to be a workable option.