Help with printer sharing

[andrewbabcock]

Does anyone have an FAQ on printer sharing or if anyone would like to walk me through it? I have enabled printer sharing on both computers but for whatever reason it doesn't want to cooperate with me. I'm probably missing something obvious but any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. I tried this but unfortunately i had no luck... I enabled sharing on both and added the printer on the other comp as a network printer, or tried to, but it couldn't connect to the printer for some reason. The problem is that the two comps aren't in sync via their wireless cards. Can anyone walk me through or point me to an faq on how to do that?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Can you ping the individual systems and/or view them over the network?

 

[andrewbabcock]

Well i set up a wireless network and plugged the flash drive into the other comp to set it up and the network exists on both computers but it's never in range under wireless connections. With a mac i probably would already have this set up... Why does windows have to be so ghey some times?

 

[Lemon law]

You should be able to get adequate documentation through windows help and then networking topics. But at least with windows ICS, I have found if you don't initially share a printer,
coming back weeks later and doing it right does not work for some reason.---and the cure for that is to re-setup the network. I also assume you checked file and printer sharing
option while setting up the network---and no other firewalls are killing the service. You must also type the printer name exactly as described by windows.

When you get it right, its kinda neat to see the driver files automatically transfer from the computer with the printer to the computer that will share the printer.

 

[andrewbabcock]

Windows firewall is on so should i just disable it on both comps? I hate it already so i'll disable it i guess...

 

[Lemon law]

At least for the folks with sp2, andrewbabcock is right to the extent that the windows firewall will pop up to save the day any time you change network settings--it then becomes an annoying job to klunk it on the head again--tell it its not needed---and get on with sharing a printer--but I do believe in having a software firewall---and so many exist that are better than the microsoft one that its not funny---but then your other job becomes to learn to tell your better firewall to allow printer sharing.

 

[ojai00]

The first thing to check is whether your computers are in the same workgroup. If you go to run and type \\othercomputername and can see the printer then you should be good to go. If not, then as suggested, try disabling Windows Firewall. If you can see the printer, you might also have to add the user of the remote computer to the users list on the computer that is sharing the printer.

 

[corkyg]

After installing a network printer, you sometimes have to find its IP address and then enter that in the other system's firewall software as a "good guy."