If you need to send a dump of text to your printer for testing purposes, you can use this command:
> copy test.txt lpt1:(assuming your printer is connected to that port).
What do you do when you want to use the copy command with a USB-connected printer? Open the printer properties, Ports tab — as you can see, the port name is usually USB001 or USB002.
If you change the command to:
> copy test.txt usb001…a new file named usb001 will be created as a copy of test.txt. But we need to send the test.txt content to the printer, not copy it.
Here is what we do to get around this.
First step:
> net use lpt1: \\localhost\printername(lpt1: becomes unusable for anything else after that, and the printer must be shared).
Second step:
> copy test.txt lpt1:Try it — it does the job when you need a quick raw-text test print.
The modern alternative
On any currently supported Windows you have a cleaner option: Out-Printer in PowerShell, which sends raw text straight to any installed printer without touching port mappings:
Get-Content .\test.txt | Out-Printer -Name "USB001"The LPT1-mapping trick above is still the tool for legacy 16-bit or DOS-era programs that insist on writing to a device port — but for ad-hoc test prints, reach for PowerShell first.