Connecting to a Home Network Printer

[Frisbee]

I have a new home desktop, running w7, and have established a Workgroup. It has our Lexmark printer attached via USB and prints fine. I am having a problem connecting a the lexmark printer to our W7 laptop through the workgroup. I can see the printer on the network when I use the Add Printer Wizard, but I get an error "Windows cannot connect to the printer," error code 0x0000000a. Help? Oh, before we recently purchased the new home desktop, our XP machine netoworked fine with our W7 laptop.

 

[TrainableMan]

These instructions are for the Printer attached to the XP machine (but works in reverse as well).

("Stand alone" Network printers can be done slightly similarly BTW).

assume the computers are call XPMACHINE and W7MACHINE.

1) Ensure Printer on XP machine is shared - assume it's called SHAREDPRINTER.

2) On the Network Browsing on your Windows 7 machine ensure you can "See" the Printer share.

Now on the Windows 7 machine do the following (doesn't matter if it's X-86 or x-64).

3) Control Panel==> add LOCAL (Yes LOCAL) printer. I know it's on a Network but hold your horses -- what we are actually doing is "Poodlefaking" the Windows 7 machine into thinking it's running the printer.

4) Create NEW port==>Local port

5) Portname is \\XPMACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER

6) Now Windows 7 will load a driver and you'll be able to print on the XP machine.

Simple

(For a "Network stand alone printer") at 4) chose TCPIP port
and at 5) enter the IP address.


If the printer is on the Windows 7 machine and you want to print on the XP machine then do the same instructions on the XP machine --
port name in this case will be \\W7MACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER

Cheers
jimbo

If I understand correctly your XP machine will require a printer driver for your new printer, hopefully the printer came with a CD. If it doesn't ask for or install the driver in step 6 then you may need to install it yourself.

info source

 

[Nibiru2012]

What TM states is true, if you want to print to a single printer from several computers in the workgroup, each computer must have the printer drivers and software installed to get it to work properly.