DOS Application from XP Mode With Wireless Printing

[webbwbb]

So I have a customer with a horrendous set of requirements. He needs to run some software that is only compatible with a Win XP and earlier command line. I convinced him to try to migrate away from XP because of it's EoL but I cannot figure out how to get Windows 7 to meet all of his requirements. I've been able to successfully get the software he runs to print to a USB printer (It only natively supports LPT). I've been able to get XP mode to recognize a WiFi printer, but I cannot get the dos based program to see the wireless printer. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed?

 

[Kari]

A virtual machine does not have WLAN adapter, nor can it see any wireless networks and devices. Even if the host computer, in this case Windows 7 is connected to network only with WLAN, the guest (XP Mode in this case) sees its connection to host as wired (LAN) connection. To put it very simple you can think that the network adapter on host system is seen by the guest OS as router and guest "thinks" it is connected with Ethernet cable to this router.

Only way to get WLAN connectivity to a virtual machine is to use third party hardware, for instance a USB WLAN stick connected to host and then from vm settings attached to guest.

In your case I think your best option would be to set XP Mode to use a shared printer on host. On host, enable sharing and check that printer is shared, on guest add a printer using local port giving the shared printer's share name (\\Host_Computer_Name\Printer_Name)

Notice that the printer drivers must be installed in XP Mode, too.

Kari

 

[mjf]

I had this problem years ago. The only solution IMO is to upgrade using software compatible with a more modern operating system. I had research engineering Fortran software and upgraded to a modern compiler (BTW Fortran 95 is an object oriented parallel processing compiler).

But if your client must stick with legacy then you could try DOSBox
DOSBox | SourceForge.net