Hi. I’m trying to remotely instruct my dad to install a Lexmark Z23 printer connected to the USB port on a Windows 98 machine.
I’ve managed to get him to download and install the driver files for the Z23 on Windows 98 from the lexmark site.
The USB port is working fine. Infact, when he first plugged in the printer to the USB port, it detected new hardware and gave the usual install driver for this device screen. Windows couldn’t find a driver for the specified printer, that’s when I asked him to download the driver from the lexmark site.
After installing the driver setup files, it listed the printer in the Settings/Printers tab. On clicking print test page from the properties box it opens a “print to file” dialog (since “file” is the default print port). I asked him then to go to ports and select USB as the port. However, it does not list USB as an option in the port choice of the printer settings. Printing to LPT1 etc. does not work.
Since I don’t have a Win 98 machine to test on, I tried setting up a USB printer on my Win XP pro machine to see how XP handles it and it added a USB port in the select ports settings, which does not happen under Windows 98.
How do I get the printer to redirect output to the USB port in Windows 98?
It’s been some time since I’ve done a printer install under Win 98, but I believe you need to uninstall the printer, unplug it from the USB port, then reboot. Plug the printer back in, and when windows detects it, click the “Have Disk” button and browse for the folder where the downloaded drivers are.
For Windows 98 and Windows ME, there is software named Client for Microsoft Network (that should have been included in the Win 98 OS) that provides the driver activation for some USB ports. (If for some reason it is not on your puter, you should be able to select it off the Win 98 disc. However, it is part of the “standard” install, so I would expect it to be there.)
As far as I heard, all versions of Win98 support USB, it was Win95 that only had support in the last couple of releases.
You do not print to “a USB port”. You print to “a specified printer” in the printers listing, and that printer’s driver deals with the USB port end of things if the printer is on a USB connection. You cannot ever specify any USB port directly, because of their extensible nature–you can only specify the software driver of a USB device. In the printers folder, you should be able to right-click on the printer and set it as the default printing device.
Try rebooting both with the printer plugged in and turned on, and with it unplugged and then connect the printer after the rest of the computer has started up.
If that doesn’t work, then delete all the printers listed and reboot and try again. If a printer properly installs, it should be listed in the Printers folder and be available as a device. How it’s connected doesn’t matter.
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What QED said. In addition there’s generally a pretty specific procedural order that USB printer drivers have to installed in or you get the kind of situation you currently have. Also Win98SE (vs Win98) had some improvements specific to handling this sort of USB recognition problem.
If the driver is installed correctly this should show up the same way in Win98 as well.
Since WIN95 OSR2 all OS have had full support for USB so that is not an issue. I have a Canon S450 running on WIN98 SE and the control panel shows all the (logical) ports and you can choose. The USB printer port is called USBPRN01 (check it out) and you can select that one or any other port.
You can buy software to do it too…or try download.com for shareware, search for ‘migration’ here is one there,
SmartClone 2.0
Automatically find and move your settings, preferences, personal files, and so on from your old PC to your new one.
OS: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
File Size: 2.54MB
License: Free to try, $50 to buy
That’s ok handy… your suggestion fixed my problem… I had to install the drivers before plugging in the printer otherwise it wouldn’t output to the USB port. If I plugged the printer in and then installed the drivers it refused to output to the USB port, it would just keep sending the output to file instead.
