You use the Microsoft XP Professional operating system, and
you have a printer that is recognized by XP plugged into a USB port. Your friend
has Microsoft Word, but you do not. Your friend has a Microsoft Word document
for you to print, but since you
don’t have Word, your friend printed it, but checked the “Print to File” box in
the print menu, resulting in a file named test.prn which you received by e-mail and
saved to your “My Documents” directory. Now you want to print it.
Windows does not have a straightforward method using the
graphical user interface to print the test.prn file. You remember from your DOS
days that you could use the command prompt and the print command, but the
print command needs a device
name, and you have no idea what device name to use for a printer plugged into a
USB port.
The print
command now allows you to specify a shared printer. First, if you have not
already done so, use Start →Printers and Faxes, right click the icon for the
printer you want to use, choose Sharing, and share the printer. Protect your
computer from intruders by using a software firewall to block access to the
printer from the Internet, or use a hardware firewall that uses address
translation to hide the printer from the Internet.
If you only do this once in a great while, and don’t want to learn about firewalls, share the printer just long enough to do the job at hand. While the printer is shared, disable access to the Internet by not dialing to your ISP, or by turning off power to your cable or DSL modem.
Suppose your computer is named Sierra, and the share name of your printer is recroom. You would start the Command Prompt and navigate to My Documents.
Issue the following command at the Command Prompt:
print /d:\\Sierra\recroom
test.prn
The file will now print.