How to map printers under windows 2000/2003/XP

Stuck with the problems of not having a graphical tool to map drives or printers as with windows 95/98 can be scary. This breif tutorial will teach you how to map resources and view them with ease.

First lets see what we have mapped on a computer. In a command prompt ('start'->'run'->Type: CMD and then hit 'Enter'.) type NET USE. This should give you a listing of all the mapped printers and drives. You can of course use the command NET USE /? to get command usage information, but this is hard to understand for the average person, and takes too much brain power overn for programming techs like myself.

Lets add a printer; In command prompt type:

net use LPT1: \\server-name\printer /PERSISTENT:YES

Let me explain:

• LPT1 is the virtual (legacy name) of the network resource. They should be numbered in sequence to make it easy to keep track. So use LIPT#
• server-name = The name of the computer that has the printer attached to it.
• printer = The printers name as listed in the shared computer.
• PERSISTENT = Use Yes to make the computer remember even after you reboot it. Use No if you want the computer to forget after reboot.

Lets delete a printer; In command prompt type:

net use LPT1: /delete

Thats it! Mapping drives is very similair and easy to do, all you use the drive letter, ie. G: and the shared folder name as opposed to the shared printer name. Have fun mapping away.