Officially, Dell seems to want to insist that the all-in-one printers are Win2k and XP only.

Unofficially....

There have been some rumours about the Lexmark X1150 driver working. I personally have successfully set up network printing from a 98 box to an XP box with an a920 (there's a good chance it'll work for the a 960 as well) printer using the Lexmark Z605 driver, at

http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=229:1:0:389:0:0&emeaframe=&searchMethod=StandardSearch&category=Driver

You'll need to know a few things though:

1. During installation of this driver, choose "FILE:" when it asks what port. This will allow a successful driver install without probing the printer (it's not physically connected, but the lexmark install program looks for it anyway.)

2. You'll need to have the printer properly installed on the XP box, and you'll need to get the windows file sharing working. Share the printer, and note the network name of the computer and the name you give the printer.

3. On the 98 box, go to Start,Settings,Printers, and right-click on the printer driver. Choose Properties.

4. Click the Details tab, and hit the "Add Port" button. Click "Network", and then select your network printer. (You can enter it in the form \\Computer\Printer or you can hit the Browse button and find it. I prefer to use Browse; it is a quick test of your windows file/printer sharing.)

5. Click OK until you can see your desktop again.

6. When you installed the printer driver, it installed a program called the "Lexmark Solution Center". You'll note that it looks very similar to the Dell Printer Solution Center on the XP box. (Coincidence?)

7. On the 98 box, run the Lexmark Solution Center. In the lower-left corner is an icon that looks like 2 LCD flat-panel screens, and it's labeled "Advanced". Click on it. The center changes, and you see a button labeled "Networking". Click on it. Now uncheck the "Enable Peer-to-Peer support" checkbox, and hit OK. Now click Exit to leave the Lexmark Solution Center.

8. Now go hit Start, Settings, Printers, right click on "Lexmark Z600 Series", choose Properties, and hit the "Print Test Page" button.

9. If all is well, the printer should print a test page. If it does, you can now print, so set this as the default printer (if necessary.)

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the reply.  I am trying your solution, but having a problem with the installation.

I downloaded the Lenmark Z605 driver for WIN 98 and ME.  Doing the installation, the only option for a port is "FILE" and it is already selected.  When proceeding with the install, I get an error message: "Error copying file - lexgo.exe.  And then cannot complete the installation.

Any ideas?

My first guess would be to ensure you have plenty of free space (100MB should be enough) on drive C.

If that doesn't work, you might do well to verify that there isn't a "lexgo" program running on your computer already. If you have any lexmark print drivers installed (that you aren't using, of course) remove them and restart your computer.

If that doesn't work, you might have a bad copy of the file. I'd go download it again from lexmark's website.

Hey, windows could do a lot better with its error messages...

Dan,

Thanks for your quick response and help with this issue.

I found 3 files (lexgo) in my Windows temp folder, delete them and installed succesfully.  Then I tried to print the test page and and another document, without success.  The XP box showed the progress meter for the Dell printer (with a document in the print que).  When the meter reached 100% nothing printed and the print que went to 0.

What do you think?

If you try to remote-print with any other print driver to that printer, you'll witness the same behavior. That means that my guess is wrong.

Ahh... Judging by the test page output binary, I'm around 85% certain that the lexmark X6170 print driver should work for you. Try this out:

Since I've already discussed that you need to get file and print sharing working in order to do any remote printing, I'll ignore the details of setting that up.

1. Remove the lexmark z605 series print driver we were trying.

2. Download CJ9x6100EN.exe from
http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=229:1:0:383:0:0&emeaframe=&fileID=1178

3. Run it to extract the files, but the included install program probably will not work. Instead, note where it extracted the files to (mine defaulted to c:\lxk6100), and use the Add Printer from control panel to install it. You'll need to use "Have Disk" and point it to an .inf file in c:\lxk6100\drivers\win9x or something similar.

I hope this helps you...

Message Edited by Dan49534 on 02-12-2004 02:11 PM

You don't choose a printer before you hit the Have Disk button. At that point you hit the have disk button and browse over to a directory like
C:\Lxk6100\drivers\WIN9x

and choose the .inf file in that directory. after that, it'll prompt you with a new list of printers, but there should be only one or two printers listed.

Hope that helps...

Dan,

I am following.  At the point in the Add printer wizard, which Lenmark printer do you select before using the "Have Disk"?

I do appreciate your help and think we are getting close.

Thanks.

Dan,

Thanks for keeping with me on this.  Here is what is happening:

Didn't chose a printer from the list (didn't think I had to do that anyway).  Select the .inf file in the directory (C:\Lxk6100\drivers\WIN9x), which is lxbflcna.inf and it tells me that "the specified location does not contain information about your hardware".

Then I try again (five times) selecting the .ini files for each attempt from the location C:\Lxk6100 (skipping the drivers directory) which are:

lxbfcomp.ini, lxbrpr.ini, lxbfpr.ini, lxbfc9X.inf, lxbfusb.ini

All of these come up with the printer as Lenmark X6100 Series.  From that point the setup starts to install, but finds "no printer attached".  Looking back at your first response,  how do I tell this setup to NOT look for an attached printer (FILE, as you mention)?  That screen gives an option to do a network connection and starts the Lenmark Network Configuration that requires the IP address of the new printer (Dell A960 on the XP box).

This is where I am stopping on trouble-shooting until I hear from you.

Any thoughts on this information?

Thanks for keeping in touch. You've motivated me to actually download the 9x driver and try it (I made my calculations of driver compatibility on the XP platform, but that should not matter; the same driver for different platforms still has to communicate with the same device, and the device cannot be expected to talk differently based on what the machine is running. Even if it could, how would one tell the device which language to speak?)

This driver looks like it may be a wee bit tedious to install, just like the one for the X1150 (which I've successfully done once on both 9x and XP; the X1150 is identical to the Dell AIO 920.) but tonight I'm just too tired to pull it off. I'll have a fresh look after some sleep. My weekend is pretty clear, I believe; I'm hoping to have found a proper solution for you before the end of it.

My directions were previously unclear because I was working from memory under the false assumption that the driver install process was the same as the one for the z600 (one of the easiest to install; pity it's also for the 920 and not the 960.)

The only inf files of interest are the lxbfpr.inf and lxbfcomp.inf; the rest are for configuring the USB connection (and while printing over the network to a remote printer, USB is irrelevent.)

I'll continue to examine this situation after a few hours of rest.

Dan,

The thanks goes to you for keeping with this issue, helping me and many others wanting to accomplish the same goal.

I just don't understand why Dell didn't do this for us.  There are many still using 98 boxes, especially when wanting to network their old PCs.  Mine was actually a ME, but my daughter took it to school for her PC repair class and brought it home with 98.  Later she took out the modem to give to a friend, then my sound didn't work.  As it turned out the modem was a combo card, so I had to buy a new sound card.  I can't get the volume to adjust with the new sound card, but that's another problem.  I believe the class must be a "jerk & retrieve" place for the teens.  Can you believe she is getting an A in the class?

Hopefully, you will help solve this problem over the weekend.  Many thanks!

Jo