Virtualization Station 3 - Win Server 2003 + Parallel Printers
Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:02 pm
I've got a QNAP running Virtualization Station 3 with a Windows Server 2003 R2 virtual machine running on it. I am trying to preserve a very old system by virtualizing it, but I am having a lot of trouble with the printers. On the old physical machine, I had 3 parallel ports going to a few old-school dot-matrix printers (Okidata / Panasonic.) These printers were shared on the domain, and used by the accounting system software to print carbon-copy forms. Now that I have virtualized the server, I can't seem to get consistent results with printing when it comes to USB to Parallel converters.
I used VS3 to connect the three USB devices to my VM, and then configured the existing printer ports to use the new USB Virtual Ports that windows created. It seems that under certain conditions (a power failure, a forced shutdown, or removing the USB connectors from the QNAP, that the printers lose their association with the appropriate USB virtual port. The printers just become unresponsive and "offline." If I unplug-and-replug the printers, additional virtual USB ports are created. The only thing that has seemed to work is deleting all my printers, and setting them up from scratch each time one of these events occurs. I'm desperate for advice in how to remedy the situation.
I used VS3 to connect the three USB devices to my VM, and then configured the existing printer ports to use the new USB Virtual Ports that windows created. It seems that under certain conditions (a power failure, a forced shutdown, or removing the USB connectors from the QNAP, that the printers lose their association with the appropriate USB virtual port. The printers just become unresponsive and "offline." If I unplug-and-replug the printers, additional virtual USB ports are created. The only thing that has seemed to work is deleting all my printers, and setting them up from scratch each time one of these events occurs. I'm desperate for advice in how to remedy the situation.