http://www.dlwrr.com/electronics/tools/Port95NT/

Port95NT Win32 doesn't allow direct manipulation of hardware so you must use a device driver to "talk" to the parallel port. I use Port95NT to control the parallel port from C++/C#. It's free and simple. Port95NT is a commonly-used driver (by Scientific Software Tools) that allows this access via a simple user-mode DLL. Sadly, Port95NT was discontinued in 1999, but it still works great on WinXP and Win7 (probably Vista too, if you're unlucky enough to be stuck with Vista).

Downloads Port95NT installer - ZIPped copy from my server (the original driverlinx site appears to be dead?!?!) C++ Parallel Port Wrapper class - ZIPfile). C# Port95NT Wrapper assembly - ZIPfile). Includes a simple demo testapp!

Port95NT Installation notes Port95NT.exe (in the above ZIP) creates a \Program Files\DLPortIO directory. This contains only the Windows uninstaller. The meat of the thing comes in two parts: DLPortIO.dll - This is the user-mode dll. It's installed into \windows\system32 (and is thus in your searchpath). DLPortIO.sys - This is the kernel-mode driver. It's installed into \windows\system32\drivers. You access it via DLPortIO.dll.

Port95NT.exe installs everything correctly on WinXP, but requires a trick (that I learned here) to get it to install on Win7: In Win7, before running Port95NT.exe: - In Explorer, right-click Port95nt.exe - Click Properties - In the popup, click the Compatibility tab - Check the Run this program in compatibility mode for: checkbox. - In the droplist, select Windows XP Service Pack 2 - Click OK

Now run Port95NT.exe as an administrator.

If you don't follow the above steps on Win7, Port95NT.exe will appear to have installed everything correctly, but you'll get a DLPORTIO.SYS is not loaded error when you invoke any of the functions exported by DLPortIO.dll