DOS101

Hoping someone can lend some ideas to an interesting problem we've been given. Just had a lecturer enquire if the following would be possible. They teach IT Skills in a local prison, and as part of this training are required to teach e-mail skills. One of the requirements is for the students to produce an email and send it to another student, and then receive a reply from the other student. All sounds pretty simply so far, however heres the kicker. Theres no internet access avalialbe to the comptuers. They do have a small local lan which the 6 computers are connected to, to allow printing only. The tutor may or maynot be able to install anything onto the computers, however is able to access the mini lan server and run applications via a memory stick, aswell as run applications from stick on the computers. So basically what I'm looking for is an email solution that can be ran from a memory stick for the clients (thinking of using ThunderBird) and a portable POP3 Server which can be ran from memory stick. The biggest issues I'm going to encounter is dealing with the obvious DNS issue. Does anyone know of any form of P2P email system, where I can install the server application onto a memory stick plugged into the server, create a list of accounts, then run the clients on the student pc's via memory stick, point the client to the "server" hostname, log into the client with one of the accounts that were created on the Server Application. So when student 1 writes an email and address it to student2@(whatever) the server intercepts the email, checks its list, knows student2 is currently logged onto the pc with ip address x.x.x.x and sends it to that client. If anyone has another solution, please let me know, because I'm hitting a blank at present. Thanks

Hi Matthew. Thanks for the reply. Since we last spoke things between myself and the church have changed. I've become somewhat annoyed with their attitude towards me and a distinct lack of communication from them regarding questions I've asked them, I've left this issue with our external copier supplier ,as even though I expressed my concerns over the quote for the add on print router, I have had no more contact from the church since that even after a number of attempts to contact them. I have spent many hours attempting to fix this issue for free and the general attitude now I have decided to withdraw my services from them now.. Thank you for all your assistance and I'm sorry I couldn't finish on a more positive note.

64bit sorry

Sorry Matthew didn't see this reply sorry. Yes ran a custom install and selected that the Copier was connected to the computer via USB. Had the cable unplugged and the unit turned off while I installed the drivers. Rebooted the computer, plugged the USB cable into the computer and turned the copier back on again. The computer detected the copier but will not install the drivers for it. I've manually tried to update the driver and that's when I get the error message regarding the Policy on the computer blocking NT4.0 drivers. If you could speak to your contact at Sharp and see how difficult it would be for them to edit the current driver to make it a user driver rather than a Kernel driver to make it compatible with Windows 8 Home. Thanks Matthew.

Thanks. Annoying thing is, if I had 8.0 Pro, I'd be ok because I could just edit the GPO to allow it to install the NT4.0 Kernel driver. The upgrade from Home to Pro is about £100 so will wait to see what Sharp say/how much the Copier Vendor quotes for their Router Module. They have said the price also includes install, so would love to know how they plan on installing it. Thanks for your continued support.

Thanks Mathew. I think I'm getting abit further down the line now and can sort of see what they mean. I've downloaded the drivers you listed, but when I attempt to install them I get the following error message. "The Printer Driver is not compatible with a policy enabled on you computer that blocks NT4.0 Drivers" I've done some research and all of the solutions I've found so far require you to turn this policy off using gpedit.msc which is not included in Windows 8 Home Edition. I've emailed Sharp to see if they can provide any assistance with the driver but I'm not holding my breath. Any suggestion?

According to the copier engineer, Sharp don't make a driver for this model of printer for Windows 8. Strange because on the Sharp website they say they do. His suggestion is to purchase a router print server to attach between the printer and the router to enable WiFi printing that way. So basically there suggestion is to make some more money by selling us a network unit,, but then we'll still need a driver to print to the copier anyway. Does anyone else think this just sounds like a massive fob off on the part of the copier company, and a way for them to make some more money.

Just been notified that our copier supplier will remote into the computer and install the copier drivers for us. Lets see if they find it any easier than I did, installing it with the Sharp drivers off the website Will wait and update when I hear more.

Thanks again. I'm not in the office at the moment, but I'll try and remote the system in abit. Its all abit complicated. I work full time as an IT technician for a local college. I'm also doing the IT admin work for the local church office which is where the printer is located. So I'm having to do a lot of the work remotely and in the evenings. The admin in the office knows a bit about computers and so keeps "helping". I'm seriously thinking I'm going to have to start locking the computer down and use the support account I've created to do the admin work. The office needs bringing into a proper corporate standing, including some IT Policies written to keep things in line. I.e the new internet router was installed last week, and installed by someone else. I made a few foolish assumptions, went in yesterday started checking and found that none of the default settings on the router had been updated. So now its running a secure password, new SSID name, new password to connect to it, etc etc. Thanks again.

Just a quick question. What's the difference between the two drivers you've listed? The other thing I wanted to check is when you install them, do you just run the setup file and let it do it all itself, or have you found a way to extract the drivers from the original package. I've found that when you run the install and it un-compresses the files to a new folder, it still appears the files are compressed within the folder so you cant access the core .ini file to point the copier to in order to manually install the copier. Thanks Matthew.

yes 64bit. thanks matthew

The other option I'm thinking is to try and get a USB - RJ45 Print Server unit and plug the Sharp into that. The only issue being of course it will still be connected to the print server unit using the USB cable.

Thanks Matthew. I think I've already tried those 2 drivers however at the moment I'm willing to give anything another try. I'll give them a try and see how it goes. Thanks again.

Evening Everyone, Seriously hoping someone can provide me with some assistance because I'm about to lose the plot Quick background info for you all. The admin office have just purchased a new PC to replace an old admin PC that's been used by the administrator for the past 4 years. After abit of hunting around, and given a very tight budget to work with I located this unit "ASUS K5130-UK016S".The PC has been purchased and came installed with Windows 8.1 Home Edition 64bit. The PC unfortunately was unboxed and installed while I was away from the office so I was not present when the initial set up took place, however when I returned that's when my problem started. The Sharp MX-M202D copier which connects to the PC via a USB cable (they wouldn't pay for the networked version) had been connected to the PC, and some drivers installed, but its not working.. I don't know what drivers were installed but I'm assured they were the ones from the Sharp website. I've listed below the steps I've already tried, Removed the printer from the system, and went to the Sharp website myself. Located and downloaded the latest PCL6 Windows 8 64bit drivers, installed them, rebooted the computer as instructed by the install, plugged the copier into the computer once the reboot had finished. Windows detects the printer is plugged in, and then promptly lists it cant find a suitable driver. I've tried the automatic update to search online for a driver, but Windows states no driver can be found online. I've tried downloading the other drivers listed on the Sharp website. I've tried manually installing the copier and manually setting the USB port the copier is plugged into. I've tried installing the copier using the original install CD it shipped with. When i tried the CD, the scanner part of the copier was installed ok and was fully working, however the printer still doesn't show up. I've tried disabling driver signing incase the driver is causing Windows8.1 issues. I've tried connecting the copier back upto the original computer, sharing the printer, and then trying to install the copier from the other computer. This method fails as it still states it is unable to locate a suitable driver for the install. I have also tried using a printer migration tool to zip all the printers installed on the original computer and move them over to the new system. The copy worked ok, however when I plugged the copier into the new computer, I still didn't have a working copier on the new computer. I've spend the last 2 days on and off working on this, plus time on Saturday and I really really dont know what to do next for the best. Really stuck and desperate to get the copier installed onto the new computer, so I can free the old one up for redeployment to another role. Can anyone please give me some suggestions on what I can try next, or if anyone else has had similar issues with their Sharp MX-M202D printer on Windows 8.1. Thanks everyone. Neil