I have a customer who has two printers, one is a thermal label printer and one is an Okidata 320 dot matrix. Both printers are physically installed on Windows XP Pro SP3 PC's and are shared. They have an inventory management system installed on a Windows 7 Professional 64 bit PC and both of these printers are installed as local printers (a requirement of the inventory system). The problem is, everytime the Win7 PC is rebooted, both of these printers show up offline and the local printer ports no longer show in the port list. However, if I try and add the printers back, a message displays saying the ports are already installed. The only way to fix it is to delete both printers from the Win7 PC, reboot again and then install them adding the local ports back during the local printer setup.
All three computers are setup on the same workgroup. I've set up the same Windows username and password on all three and are administrator accounts. I've tried the local printer ports with a \\host\share and set the two XP computers with static IP addresses and used \\IP Address\share. I've turned the Windows firewall and all 3rd party application firewall/AV software off. All three are on the same router and all Windows updates have been installed.
I can install both printers as network printers on the Win7 PC and both work fine after the PC is rebooted. I've also set up folder shares on both XP computers and mapped a drive to the shares on the Win7 computer and both shares are fine after rebooting. It's something to do with the printers if they are installed locally.
I've searched online for a fix but so far, nothing but dead ends. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am out of ideas.
All three computers are setup on the same workgroup. I've set up the same Windows username and password on all three and are administrator accounts. I've tried the local printer ports with a \\host\share and set the two XP computers with static IP addresses and used \\IP Address\share. I've turned the Windows firewall and all 3rd party application firewall/AV software off. All three are on the same router and all Windows updates have been installed.
I can install both printers as network printers on the Win7 PC and both work fine after the PC is rebooted. I've also set up folder shares on both XP computers and mapped a drive to the shares on the Win7 computer and both shares are fine after rebooting. It's something to do with the printers if they are installed locally.
I've searched online for a fix but so far, nothing but dead ends. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am out of ideas.
