Sharing my Printer

[Jawnskeel]

I am running Vista Home Premium 64-bit on this computer. I have downloaded and installed the drivers for my printer. I am perfectly capable of printing from this computer. I also have two laptops in my house that are connected wirelessly to the network. I want to know if it is possible to "share" my printer to these laptops. One of the laptops is Windows XP Home Edition, the other is Vista Home Premium 32-bit.


If I can do it, can someone aid me?

 

[Matt101905]

Yes you can do that. What you have to do is connect the printer into your router instead of hooking it up directly to your desktop. I'm not so sure how vista works with that stuff and I may be wrong but I think it should be as easy as after you hook up your printer to your network router, to go to the control panel on your desktop then click on Printers and Faxes. There you should see "Add a printer" under printer tasks. At least this is how you do it on xp, but I'm sure vista should be similar. I think you have to do those steps to all the computers you plan on printing from. Hope I helped just a little. Good luck!

 

[mikesgroovin]

The OP didn't even state if the printer had that kind of capability "out of the box". The OP also stated that the printer worked just fine on one machine. Just curious as to why you recommend a completely different game plan based on unknowns.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

You will need to set up printer sharing on the vista machine, then connect to that machine via the laptops and tell them to install that printer, you may need to download the other set of drivers for the different OS, but you won't have to worry about the firewall as long as you do the normal share it should create the rules that would allow others in over the LAN.

 

[Jawnskeel]

You will need to set up printer sharing on the vista machine, then connect to that machine via the laptops and tell them to install that printer, you may need to download the other set of drivers for the different OS, but you won't have to worry about the firewall as long as you do the normal share it should create the rules that would allow others in over the LAN.

I think I tried that, and it didn't work. Forget this thread though, I'm getting a new printer and I will be fiddling around with that one.

 

[Jayce]

I don't know how printer sharing is in Vista, but I've always just shared the printer out on the host computer and on the other computers (in this case the laptops) went to start - run - and typed \\their.ip.address.here. Then shared stuff comes up. Printer is listed. Right click. Connect. Done. Only trick is they have to be in the same workgroup.

 

[mikesgroovin]

Only trick is they have to be in the same workgroup.

Workgroups do not hold any permission sets whatsoever. Nodes do not have to be in the same workgroup to share resources. Workgroups just make finding the resources easier, more organized. Permissions are held on the workstations themselves unless in a domain.