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I have a very niche problem where I need to set up a network printer for use with an application which only accepts USB printer connections. Is there any way to fool this application that our network printer is in fact a USB printer?

The network printer is set up with its own HTTP printer server. On the client-side proprietary software is ran which scans the network for said server instances. After client-side setup, it appears in Windows 10 printer settings as a normal, locally installed printer would.

The printer is an Evolis Primacy and the software that scans for this printer on the network is from them. The software which accepts only USB printing is a proprietary system which simply acts as an API to retrieve things from a remote DB at print-time and appends these details to the printed product.

I imagine that it should be possible to point a virtual USB to the IP address of this print server, but I can't find any software or commands to do so.

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  • You might have better chances in making that proprietary software accept non USB printers. Depends on how it's made, usually on Windows softwares don't care about the printer type. I'm thinking here about "injection", "hooking", "hot patching"...
    – user1532080
    Commented Mar 19 at 10:48
  • There doesn't seem to be a (straight forward) way to determine if a printer uses USB with Win32 API. Are you sure the device accepts only USB? Might it be some other criteria? You could possibly try renaming the printer port (they tend to be USBXXXX for USB printers, that might be enough to get your software to accept another printer)
    – user1532080
    Commented Mar 19 at 10:52

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Virtual USB software is not going to help you, because the proprietary software for this printer is NOT a normal "USB over LAN" virtual interface.

According to the Evolis web-site this printer is USB capable, so you may be able to connect it directly to the computer.
If that is not feasible (distance to were the printer is located) a USB hub with a network port (and the accompanying virtual USB software) can be used. E.g. an AnywhereUSB (just to name a well-known brand) or a similar device.

Please note that some printers when connected to a USB port will disable their own build-in network interface. And most USB-LAN hubs only allow 1 client computer to connect to it at a time. This could be an additional complication for you.

Depending on you exact use-case it may actually be simpler/cheaper just to buy a second printer and hook that up directly by USB to the computer you need to print from.

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