I got a MacBook late last year. I am running Mac OS X 10.6.2. I learned how to use the network to connect to printers connected to Windows' machines, but the Mac doesn't have a driver for my ancient, but very well working HP Deskjet 722C printer. I was printing to my wife's more modern printer, but she disconnects her machine too frequently and I have to walk over with the Mac and physically connect. Yuk! I had given up when I found a gem on the Internet,
How to Use a Printer Attached to a Windows XP Computer in Mac OS X, that led me to a solution.
Now, the instructions did work exactly as written for me, but contained everything I needed to resolve. Here are the key points that vary from the instructions in the article that led to my success:
Do exactly as instructed for items 1-3. Except, choose to share "Ghostscript722C"; you will see why in a moment.
I selected "HP Color LaserJet 2500 PS" for the Print Driver instead of "Apple Color LW 12/660 PS" which was not installed on my system. I just looked for something with "PS" and went with HP for obvious reasons (the printer is an HP, but I don't think it matters as long as it supports postscript).
I did have to make the registry change suggested in the instructions:
After googling the error I found the following solution on redmons homepage:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/
"gsprint can't find any printers because RedMon runs as the default
user which doesn't have any printers. Copy the printer configuration
in the registry from the current user to the default user. This problem
is related to using mswinpr2 on Windows NT."
And the solution is found here:
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/muir.htm
Copying the stringvalue with *the name of the real, working
printer* (as phrased in part3) found in the registry location.
Using Start->Run->Regedit (be careful, because it can cause severe
damage to windows if something wrong is done with regedit):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Devices
f.ex. (I suppose in your case, if it was on windows 2000):
String name: "HP DeskJet 722C" (The printername)
String value: "winspool,FILE:"
To the registry location:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Devices
String name: "HP DeskJet 722C" (The printername)
String value: "winspool,FILE:"
My String value was "LPT1:", not "FILE:" though.
And, this note (also in the main article referenced above), led me to the final conclusion which worked:
I'd like to contribute one note for the instructions that other
multi-computer switchers might find useful:
With 10.3 Panther, one has the option to just share the redirected
printer as a standard Windows share instead of using Unix print services.
I basically just followed your instructions up to step 3, but then just
turned on sharing. I was then able to find the printer from the Printer
Setup Utility using the Windows Printing menu item.
However, I used the Add Printer, Advanced Tab
- Type: Windows
- Device: Another Device
- URL: smb://IBMServer/Ghostscript722C (Note: "IBMServer is server name where printer is connected)
- Name: IBMServer
- Location:
- Print Using: Generic PostScript Printer
And, walla, I am printing.
July 10, 2011: Chattonooga, TN
