Fusion

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  • 1.  Printer and Scanner Sharing

    Posted Dec 28, 2023 11:10 PM

    I'm having problems with the printer and scanner. I want to use the printer and scanner in the virtual machine with Windows 11, but somehow it's not working.

    can someone help me?



  • 2.  RE: Printer and Scanner Sharing

    Posted Dec 29, 2023 04:13 AM

    That's no longer supported in Fusion 13.5.  You'll need to either connect the devices directly to the guest with USB or use wireless printing.



  • 3.  RE: Printer and Scanner Sharing

    Posted Dec 29, 2023 04:25 AM

    For the scanner, assuming it is USB, you can attach it to the VM from the USB controller menu. As it is attached via USB, it is either the Mac host or the VM that will have exclusive access at any one time. So there is the element to connect/disconnect depending whether the Mac host needs it or the Windows 11 VM needs it.

    If the printer can be attached to network (whether wired or WiFi), the VM network setting can be set to "Automatic" or Bridged instead of "Shared with my Mac". As the printer is shared from network, it is truly shared. How you share the printer via network, look up the printer documentation. If the printer does not have network capability but only has USB, the same approach can be taken and same restriction apply like in the scanner.

    For both cases, it requires the Windows 10/11 device drivers either from the manufacturer website download or from Windows update.

    Question is is the Windows 11 VM running on Apple ARM64 CPU or Intel CPU.

    Both approaches should also work for Windows 11 VM running Apple ARM64 CPU, provided the printer and scanner has ARM64 drivers. You have to check the device product manufacturer if they provide an Windows 11 ARM64 driver for the particular printer model and scanner model. Most manufacturers provide an ARM64 driver if the device model is relatively new (i.e. they are still willing to spend the money to write the driver to support the product model for the next few years). If there is no ARM64 driver for the device model, it will not work and you need to find a device models that have ARM64 to replace them.

     



  • 4.  RE: Printer and Scanner Sharing

    Posted Dec 29, 2023 04:50 AM

    Actually if your printer is defined on the Mac and you are using NAT networking (Share with my Mac), you can use those printers. Go to the Mac’s Printer and Scanners settings and share the printer.. It will be found by Windows 11 ARM and can be used with no need to download printer drivers.

    It may work for the scanner as well - but haven’t checked that out -give ,e a couple of days ani I’ll be able to test that out and make sure one way or the other. 



  • 5.  RE: Printer and Scanner Sharing

    Posted Dec 29, 2023 05:49 AM

    It may work for the scanner as well - but haven’t checked that out -give ,e a couple of days ani I’ll be able to test that out and make sure one way or the other. 


    It depends what defines as work. Some scanners come with their own specialised software or for at least those specialised functionality such as OCR or photofilm negative scanning So if those specialised software can't run on ARM64 (because it will interact with a native Windows driver), those functionalities are gone. Maybe the minimum is just ordinary scan through a TWAIN driver in Windows ARM64 (if TWAIN driver exists in Windows ARM64).