printer looses mapping after reboot in winXP

Hi all,
I have one pc in a peer to peer network that keeps losing the mapping to the laser printer after a reboot. I have other winXP machines in the workgroup that work fine. this is the only machine that does.

Its a dell laptop that is connected to a docking station via a USB cable. Its all Dell equipment.

I know the user name and password work because I use the same user name and password that I login with to log into the win2k server and remap the printer.


any ideas?

did you try adding the printer (full UNC) into C:\winnt\printers.txt?

I've never used that. I just looked on my XP system here at the house and I don't see a printers.txt file.

Did a quick google on C:\winnt\printers.txt and nothing.

Do you just creat this file and XP reads it?

I've done some research and It looks likes printers.txt is used by scripts and domain login scripts.

This is a 5 pc workgroup system. I have 2 pc's that after reboot loose their printer mapping. Their share drives are still there.

One thing that I notice is that after they login and get connected, when I go to re-map the printer it askes me to login again. I'm entering the same login information as I did in the beginning.

I'm really stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

thaks all!

i sugest making a .bat file on the c drive of those machines that uses "net use" to map the printer each time you login then another script which disconnects the printer when you log out.

lets call the first script "login.bat"
where x is the number of the printer port that you want to map, where printserver is the print server that is sharing the printer, and where sharename is the name of the printer share and where password is the password for the account used. Domain name can also be the name of the server.

then the second script "logoff.bat"

then go to start-run, type in "gpedit.msc" then under "Computer Configuration" go to "Windows Settings" then "Scripts" and add the scripts to startup and shutdown.

I know this works for network drives, but i've never tried printers. and i know it works for xp pro, but im not sure about anything else.

thanks I'll give it a shot.