Two PC's on KVM switch share a usb printer?

B

Black_Blade

New Member
I have an old PC with one usable USB port and since need to keep it around for the program it has on it I have used a KVM switch between it and a little newer but still not state of the art PC. This arrangement works fine until I need to print something from old PC...wondering if I put a USB hub into the single port on old PC would KVM still work? I could then run a USB cord from the hub to an auto sensing switch so to share the one USB printer between the two PCs...will this arrangement work?
 
They are not networked at the moment, and was only planning on running a cable to the newer pc not the old one. Be nice if could just install the hard drive from the old pc into the other tower but it runs an old version of XP while the newer one is win 7 ultimate. Thinking simplest to just run some USB cables etc, but just not sure if the KVM switch will still do its thing if it is fed into a hub rather than straight into the port.

Update: I remembered that I had an old d-link router in a box of stuff in the garage, so just plugged both pc's into this and set up to share the printer..good to go! Its not connected to the net at the moment but that's easy once run a cable out to the router..
 
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Since you say you have Win 7 Ultimate on the newer machine, why don't you download and install XP Mode from MS? That should allow you to run that older software on the newer machine. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002

XP Mode consists of 2 pieces, Windows Virtual PC which allows you to create virtual machines and the XP Mode which is a virtual machine which includes a fully-licensed copy of XP Pro.

Here's another possibility, create a virtual machine from your old XP machine and use it in Win 7: http://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/convert-your-existing-windows-xp-system-into-a-virtual-machine/1/
 
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