Q. When I choose a printer I see the same printer twice when running Classic. One of the printers I see doesn’t work. How do I get rid of the second printer?

A. Many users still required Classic to run legacy applications. They could be sales or accounting applications, which may never be written for MacOS X. By the way, Classic is not supported on the new Intel Macs – they are “greyed out” so you can’t open them. The double printer you’re seeing is the result of setting up the printer twice.

Normally you would setup a printer using the “Printer Setup Utility” (located in the Application’s Utility folder.) You could choose Print from a MacOS X application and choose “Edit Printer…” from the pull-down list of printers. When the “Printer List” appears you choose Add and Browse for a printer. When you select a printer your Mac will attempt to find the appropriate PPD (Postscript Printer Description.) You should note that if it can’t find it you can manually choose one by navigating to the PPD file. If you want the Mac to find it put it in “/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lprog”. You can also rename the printers in the Print Setup Utility – if you have more than one of the same model.

The next time you start Classic it will review the MacOS X printer list you’ve built and make those printers available to Classic applications. The older applications can use the MacOS X printer queues. However, when you are in Classic mode, (you’ll see the old multicolored Apple in the top left corner,) some applications require you to set up a printer with the “Chooser”. These applications cannot use the MacOS X queues. When you create a “Classic” printer queue using the Chooser you will only see the printer only in Classic.

The only way to remove the doubly defined printer is to Trash the “LaserWriter8 Prefs” file from the Printing Preferences (located in the System Folder’s “Preferences” folder.) Remember when you restart Classic it will rebuild the LaserWriter 8 Prefs when it starts. If the MacOS X print queue loses your job – then the Classic application doesn’t support this method of printing. You’ll have to use the Chooser to set up the printer and you’ll be seeing double again. You can always renane the MacOS X queue as mentioned above.