Epson 1280 Printer not shared in XP Mode

Well, I found the answer! The Epson 1280 was not being assigned a TS port when in XP Mode even though the HP printer was (TS001). The solution was to open the "Printers and Faxes" in XP Mode, click on "Add Printer", click on "Next", selection "Local printer attached to this computer" but be sure clear a check mark (if any) in "Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer", then click "Next", under "Use the following port", select one of the TS ports. Since on my computer the TS001 port was used by the HP printer, I selected port TS002, then click on "Next", select your printer driver and install. Just for good measure I allowed the printer to be shared but I don't think that was necessary. The printer now appears in the "Printer and Faxes" page as "Ready" which it didn't before. The HP printer has always appeared as "Ready". The programs I run in XP Mode can now print to the Epson printer on TS002 without having to "attach" the printer from the USB tab at the top of the XP Mode window. I've seen from other posts that you may have to try trial and error to find the TS ports used by Win 7 for sharing printers in XP Mode. I only had one printer to match up but if you have multiple printers with the same problem it may be tedious but you only to have to it once. There is no indication in the "Select a port" window as to which Win 7 printer is assigned to which TS port, you have to guess and try printing a test page to see if you guessed correctly. Of course, if the manufacturer wrote the Win 7 driver correctly, you wouldn't have this problem (the Win 7 HP driver for the 1020 worked perfectly, the Epson driver was listed as Vista 64 bit with nothing said about Win 7 support).  

I still get a communication error from the Epson Status Monitor immediately upon sending a print job to the printer but then printing starts and I can then just X out the Status Monitor window without a problem. I guess it takes a few seconds before communication is established and the Status Monitor doesn't allow enough time. So I still have the one additional step of having to X out the error window but everything still prints (even if I don't X out the window) - so I'll take that as progress.

Now I can now put a shortcut to the CreataCard program on my Win 7 desktop that will automatically open itself in XP Mode with no further actions required by me (except X'ing out the Status Monitor error window when printing a job). By next job is figuring out how to prevent the Status Monitor error window from coming up.

Progress I guess.