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ACAD and Windows 2000.. Can they work?

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16 replies

by seandurcan 1 view

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I have a friend who has recently purchased a machine with WIN2000 as the OS. He is using AutoCAD R13 and it picks up the CAD drivers for a HP Designjet 330 Plotter. However, it will not permit it to use LPT1 and gives "cannot set up LPT1" error or something to that effect. ACAD trouble-shooting has told me that it's trying to use a port already allocated to another printer. This is not he Case.... Has anyone got any life-saving tips for me? If possible, e-mail me at seandurcan@eircom.net . Thank you kindly.

16 replies

by nicholas paras

Is the port setup and functioning? Can he use another printer on the same port? If not the port may not be activated in the BIOS, you will have to go into the bios and activate it. Then the OS will recognise it and then setup the plotter. But first check to see if you can use another printer on the port.

Regards,

Nicholas.

by seandurcan

THAT HAS BEEN LOOKED AT AND BOTH PLOTTER AND PRINTER HAVE WORKED VIA THIS PORT IN OTHER PROGRAMS.

by robertp

R13 may not be supported. I don't think R13 is support for Win 2000. In other word the printer drivers in Acad don't work in w/ Win 2000. First, does the plotter work with Win 2000 without Acad (send test page). If yes, then use the system printer option in Acad instead of sending the print to a specified device.

Good Luck, Bob

by wsande1

I can't promise that this will work but it is worth a try. It worked for me a while back on a system using Acad R13.
Share the printer that you want to use. Connect to that printer (yes on the same PC) Use a different printer name for this. Now connect to the connection that goes through the share.
I can't remember why I had to do this just that it sounded so weird that it was the first thing that came to mind.

by seandurcan

Tried this your way and also added it to a second computer and mapped iyt that way but all to no avail. Thanks for trying.

by gregory pleau

AutoCAD 14 is the first true Win32 (as in Win2000 friendly) release of AutoCAD. Stongly recommend an upgrade - failing that approach, get Win2K service pack one and all the Windows 2000 Compatibility updates from Microsoft.

You will probably have to use the 'system printer' driver and install the Win2000 plotter driver as a Windows 2000 printer (as in NOT the Acad 13 driver).

Windows 2000 is blocking the direct port access, as the NT/2000 architecture is designed to do. You will absolutely have to use Windows 2000 aware drivers to get access to LPT1:

by seandurcan

What I'm really looking for is a solution to this problem. YOu've stated something I already know. Thanks anyway.

by schitzoid

check the compatability on there web site, if auto cad 13 doesn't support 2000, or have an update so it can, roll back to nt4

by seandurcan

Been there, done that and I'm afraid the NT4 option is a non-runner. Too much to loose including time. I'm currently running a Win98 machine alongside the win2000 machine. It does the plotting at the moment.

by zchris

this could be an impossible task. i think its win2k who occupy the port. try it with win9x

by seandurcan

I think you're right about that. As mentioned in one of my previous comments, I have networked the 2K machune with a Win98 machine. The drawings are plotted from the Win98 machine. The reason I can't go back to an OS other tha Win2K is that the drawing software requires Win2K.

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