How to access a network printer without installing it in Windows 10

ajreynolds · 25 Aug 2016

Greetings all.

We have a number of networked barcode printers set up and shared on a Windows 2012 server. They all use the Generic/Text Only driver. In Windows 7 we are able to print to these printers by specifying the UNC path in our application, such as \\servername\printersharename. We don't need to add the printer in Windows on each PC.

We're now starting to switch to Windows 10 and found that the only way to access the printers is to add each one to Windows on every Win 10 PC. Is there a way to avoid this in Windows 10 and access the printers without adding to each PC?

Thanks very much.

bro67 · 26 Aug 2016

It does not matter what OS you are using to print to a printer. You just have to be able to use the drivers for whatever printer you are using. As long as there are drivers for those barcode printers, you could even use just Linux to do the job. Any printer will print out Barcodes.