| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 93881 | 2008-10-05 09:33:00 | What is Port "DOT4-001"?? | Billy T (70) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 709787 | 2008-10-05 09:33:00 | Hi Team Since Old Faithful (my decrepit W98 Print Server) died, with the printing demands of two UNI students plus my business to satisfy I have had to make other arrangements for the print-load here on our home network. I hooked my HP1200 printer up to LPT1 on my main computer via the in/out pass-through ports on my HP scanner, booted the computer and the printer was duly recognised. I loaded the CD and installed the drivers, printed a test page and thought all was well, but no such luck. More often than not I now get an error message "can't print to Port DOT4-001" and on checking in Device Manager I find that it is not installed on LPT-1 but is on what seems to be a virtual port called DOT4-001. It prints test pages OK (most of the time, sometimes it fails) but when I try to print a document I get an error message "cannot find DOT4-001" etc. This is unfamiliar territory to me, I've been installing and uninstalling printers for years and never saw anything like this. At one stage Old Faithful had three LPT ports running with a variety of printers plus the scanner and never complained once! How can I force this printer back onto LPT-1? Cheers Billy 8-{) :confused: |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 709788 | 2008-10-05 17:08:00 | DOT4-001 is a virtual port that normally points to a to usb port that the printer is connected to. If its not a usb printer, go to the ports area of the print driver setup and take the tick from dot4-001 and put in lpt1 if that's the port the printer is setup on. some drivers assume when they are setup that the port they are using is usb and there set themselves up on dot-001 |
beama (111) | ||
| 709789 | 2008-10-05 20:17:00 | Thanks Beama That answered my question but I still had a helluva job to get it up and running. It wouldn't offer anything but Dot4-001 as the install port, then I hit on the idea of trying the option to install another printer. That then let me choose LPT1 as the printer port but it still wouldn't print. The reboot after installation also brought up an HP utility Window I've never seen before with coloured buttons and other Jazz, but that did nothing useful. I closed that and the computer immediately dived into a "new hardware found" routine and promptly installed another copy of the drivers on dot4 which wouldn't print either, so I went to device manager and deleted the Dot4 references, went back to the control panel and selected the printer on LPT1 and at last it printed. I don't know if it will survive a reboot, which was my downfall on previous occasions, but at least it is printing from LPT1 and showing all the right details. Talk about a marathon effort to install a printer that was already installed It is odd that I have never seen the Dot option before, I have been installing printers for years and it was always a simple five minute job. I do have two USB printers connected now though, an Epson colour laser and a Canon Inkjet so that may have been a factor. The Canon still prints to USB as well so I haven't lost that. Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 709790 | 2008-10-06 02:12:00 | Well, everything was going fine earlier today and printing to LPT1 was normal, but when I went to print a document a few minutes back I got the dreaded warning "bong" and on checking, I found that LPT1 was no longer working and the printer was back on Dot4-001!!! This without a reboot, it just quietly waited until I wasn't looking and did the dirty on me again. Any ideas why I can't make this stick? I'm doing everything from a clean boot so that there's nothing else hanging around but I don't seem to be able to keep LPT1 in action. Would installing in safe mode help? Cheers Billy 8-{) :confused: |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 1 | |||||