Home Network Gurus: Shared Printer

[CraigSca]

This is an adjunct to a thread I started about a week ago concerning the sharing of a printer on my home network. Initially, I planned on sharing a printer with a laptop that's using a company-owned network and I couldn't have it point to two networks. No biggie.

Now, I'm trying to share this printer with just a junk PC I have in the same room. They're both connected into the same wireless network and have Internet access. I have shared the printer and called it "LaserJet". As I understand it, all I have to do now is go to my junk PC and "Add a Printer..." telling it to look for the printer on the network. It never comes back with anything. I don't get it - this sounds like the simplest process, yet it's proving too difficult for me.

FWIW, I'm not sharing ANYTHING on the network, no files, no nothing - and this is my first attempt at anything looking even remotely peer-to-peer on the home side -- we purely use this for outside access. Was there some crap parameter I forgot to enable to create a "home and shareable" network when I installed XP all over the place? Is there something in the router that could be preventing this? It's really irritating me...

Thanks in advance!

[SackAttack]

My guess is one of two things are happening.

1) the printer is a resource primarily attached to the main computer on the network, and you haven't set up permissions for it to be used by other machines (my dad had to do this to allow my PC to print off the LaserJet a number of years ago).

2) the junk PC doesn't have the proper drivers and so doesn't recognize the printer on the network.

I'm not a techie, but those seem like the most probable culprits to me.

[CraigSca]

My guess is one of two things are happening.

1) the printer is a resource primarily attached to the main computer on the network, and you haven't set up permissions for it to be used by other machines (my dad had to do this to allow my PC to print off the LaserJet a number of years ago).

2) the junk PC doesn't have the proper drivers and so doesn't recognize the printer on the network.

I'm not a techie, but those seem like the most probable culprits to me.

How do I set up the permission for it to be used by other machines beyond the check box next to "share printer" and giving the printer a name?

I'm going to try on my wife's PC to see if it's the junk one (though the junk one is on XP as well).

[SackAttack]

Dad said what you did should work, although it "helps if it's on the same subnet." That's Greek to me.

He also said that if you reboot the computer you're trying to hook up to the printer, it may be capable of finding it afterwards. Have you gone to "Printers and Faxes" on XP, done the whole 'add a printer' route, and indicated it was a network printer? If so, and it still hasn't found it, give the reboot a try.

[Calis]

Yeah it's a bigger pain than you'd think. I have to deal with this quite a bit at my work, but we actually use printservers on ours, which in turn makes it simpler and more of a pain in the ass than anything else. What kind of printer do you have?

Your best bet would be to plug it into the network, then look up how to print a network configuration page on it, whatever page will give you the IP address the printer has been assigned, then go into your add a printer panel and manually add that IP port. Searching doesn't always work, especially over a network like that, and it really depends on the printer as well, some don't cooperate at all. You will probably have to have a printserver or a printer with a built-in printserver to do this. I could be wrong though, and anyone feel free to correct me. :)

That's very little help, but I have found it's a lot better to manually put in the info if possible than counting on the search.

Another odd thing, and this one I couldn't tell you why but at work at least when I'm adding a printer to a computer on the network I actually have to tell it to look for a local printer attached and then point to the correct IP Address rather than say it's one on the network. No clue why, but you might try that also.

[Coder]

You say you're not sharing anything on your network?

What if you right click on the printer in the printer-list and select Share? You need to share the printer for it to show up when you're searching for printers on the network.

[MizzouRah]

Also, right click on your network connection, go to properties and make sure you have file and printer sharing checked.

[CraigSca]

You say you're not sharing anything on your network?

What if you right click on the printer in the printer-list and select Share? You need to share the printer for it to show up when you're searching for printers on the network.

I'm sharing the printer - but that's it, nothing else on the network.

[CraigSca]

Also, right click on your network connection, go to properties and make sure you have file and printer sharing checked.

Yep, it's checked.

[CraigSca]

Yeah it's a bigger pain than you'd think. I have to deal with this quite a bit at my work, but we actually use printservers on ours, which in turn makes it simpler and more of a pain in the ass than anything else. What kind of printer do you have?

Your best bet would be to plug it into the network, then look up how to print a network configuration page on it, whatever page will give you the IP address the printer has been assigned, then go into your add a printer panel and manually add that IP port. Searching doesn't always work, especially over a network like that, and it really depends on the printer as well, some don't cooperate at all. You will probably have to have a printserver or a printer with a built-in printserver to do this. I could be wrong though, and anyone feel free to correct me. :)

That's very little help, but I have found it's a lot better to manually put in the info if possible than counting on the search.

Another odd thing, and this one I couldn't tell you why but at work at least when I'm adding a printer to a computer on the network I actually have to tell it to look for a local printer attached and then point to the correct IP Address rather than say it's one on the network. No clue why, but you might try that also.

The printer is a LaserJet 3050. It doesn't have a network port on it, so I direct-connected via USB to my home PC. How can I "network" the printer without having an Ethernet port?

I'll give the IP address a shot.

[CraigSca]

Ok, I did an ipconfig /all to find the IP address of the PC that's supporting my printer. It's 192.168.1.3 (I use DHCP on my home network).

Ok, so I went to my other PC, said add a network printer and then chose option 2: "Connect to this printer (or to browse a printer, select this option and click Next" In the text box I wrote: \\192.168.1.3\LaserJet (file://\\192.168.1.3\LaserJet) and then tried \\192.168.1.3 (file://\\192.168.1.3) Both times it came back and said "Windows cannot connect to the printer - either the printer name was typed incorrectly, or the specified printer has lost its connection to the server. " That's the same message I got earlier as well.

This stinks.