I wish to determine whether a particular named USB printer is connected and available and to use this fact as a conditional element of my program.

Using the control panel in windows XP (looking at printers and faxes) the status of each device for which a driver is loaded is displayed as OFFLINE or READY). My wish is to access this status information, or similar, through VB6 program code.

I have spent several hours looking through previous Forum posts and other Googled sources but none seems to offer what would seem to be a simple solution to what is surely a simple question : Is printer "its name" OFFLINE or READY?

Suggestions/pointers would be appreciated please.

camoore