Help with adding a printer?

[WizeOne]

I have a wired network at home with 5 stations on it. Connected to my computer are two printers. How can I add the printers to the other computers on the network. Two of the other computers have already had them added but it was done by my son who is no longer in residence.

On the computer in question, I went to add printer and chose the 'network' option. It scanned for available printers but it did not come up with any available. The computers that already have them added show them as 'xxxxxprinter on family computer' but I do not know how to find them to add.

Oh, and this computer is a laptop using Vista. It seems to be different than XP

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I've done a little snooping around. On the Vista machine I went in to Network Sharing Center and turned on the Share Printer function. I also turn off the Password Protection for Shared Printers. Two things have happened. When I try to run Add Printer it tells me that I do not have sufficient authorization to perform this function. The other is that it now shows my wifes computer on the Vista computer network but it does not show mine (family computer) This is the one the printers are connected to.

I think this must be much easier in XP, which is the OS of my Family Computer.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

If you check on your XP computer in "Network Workgroups", does the Vista machine show up?

Also, using the "Add printer" option on the XP machine. Select "network printer" and "browse". Make sure the 2 printers are listed in that window. If they are, but you can't find them on the vista M/C, it is some sort of conflict between Vista and XP and you may need to delete the printers and reinstall them.

I had some problems with printers on my home network when some machines were running Win98 and some XP. All are now on XP but some pinhead is about to upgrade one of them to Win 7...
At that time I deleted all the printers and then reinstalled them. It worked, but no idea why... except that it obviously fixed some config conflicts.

You are absolutely right that this is a snap in XP.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Where do I find 'Network Workgroups' on my XP machine?

I know the printers on my machine show up on the other XP machines in the house. One is my wifes xp laptop and she uses the printers all the time, the other is on my son's dormant xp PC but he prints when he comes to visit.

I just do not think the Vista machine sees the network.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Where do I find 'Network Workgroups' on my XP machine?

I know the printers on my machine show up on the other XP machines in the house. One is my wifes xp laptop and she uses the printers all the time, the other is on my son's dormant xp PC but he prints when he comes to visit.

I just do not think the Vista machine sees the network.

Oh boy.... don't know it by heart.
Ok, let me minimise this and see if I can list the path....

Ahhh...easier than I thought...go to "start"...."My network places"....and in the left hand upper corner under "network tasks" you should see the icon.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Where do I find 'Network Workgroups' on my XP machine?

I know the printers on my machine show up on the other XP machines in the house. One is my wifes xp laptop and she uses the printers all the time, the other is on my son's dormant xp PC but he prints when he comes to visit.

I just do not think the Vista machine sees the network.

Ok, if the Vista machine can not see YOUR XP computer, it'll never find the printers attached to it.
Try accessing the Vista help function and see what they say about adding a computer to a work group.

Probably a pipe dream, but it could be as simple as just needing to add the Vista M/C to the work group properly.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I'm betting that on all the XP machines when you access "Network Workgroups" all the XP Machines (that are turned on) will show up...can you see the Vista M/C from your PC?

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Oh boy.... don't know it by heart.
Ok, let me minimise this and see if I can list the path....

Ahhh...easier than I thought...go to "start"...."My network places"....and in the left hand upper corner under "network tasks" you should see the icon.

I am hopelessly befuddled. On my XP machine, with printers, I go to My Network Places. I see absolutely nothing about Network Tasks.

There are 5 lines with the following; add network place, network setup wizard, wireless network setup wizard, entire network and documents on family-computer (mine)

I opened up 'entire network' and it has 4 lines with icons: logmein virtual disk network, microsoft terminal services, microsoft windows network and webclient network.

No where do I see anything that displays what is in the network.

 

[jlinder]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I know this works on XP. If the printer is already shared, go to the the computer you want to add the printer to and go to Run, then type \\<computername>\ and you will see the printer show up.

For example, if your other machine is called office, you type \\office\ and you should see the printer show up as \\office\printername

If it can't find office, find the IP address of the office computer and type \\192.168.1.5\ or whatever the IP address is.

If it can't get that you have a permissions problem. Make sure you are using the same user name everywhere.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I'll go try that. How do I find the ip addy on the 'office' computer?

I did enter \\family-computer\ in the run box and it couldn't find anything.

once I get the family-computer's ip addy, do I enter it in the same run box?

 

[jlinder]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Run, type "cmd" to open a command line window. They type "ipconfig" for the IP address.

Go to the machine you are trying to add the printer to and Run, "cmd", then type ping <ip address of the other machine>.

It should return with 4 responses of the ping.

Then try ping <machine name>, as in ping office. If that also works you can use the machine name. If not use the IP address

Type exit in the command line window to close it

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

The problem, is that if the Vista m/c is not part of the network it is not going to find the printer no matter what IP address you try.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Ok, I pinged the family computer from the Vista computer and it came back with the 4 responses. I tried pinging with 'family-computer' and it didn't recognize it. However, I did not use the \\~~~~\'s

I can also successfully ping the Vista computer from the family computer.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

so the wiring and / or any wireless connections are good.
Has the Vista PC ever been used on the network to actually interact with the other machines, or has it just surfed and done other things on its own?
I'm still thinking it never was added to the network group properly or at all.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I'm still thinking it never was added to the network group properly or at all.

I'm sure you are correct. It is a relatively new computer and my daughter has been away at school. She had printed from this station, using an older IBM laptop with XP. I am sure that she has used the wired connection with this computer but never printed from it.

The computer name on my computer is 'family-computer', the workgroup name is WORKGROUP.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I give up! The instructions in Vista are absolutely worthless. Everytime you ask questions, the given answers do not dovetail with what you need. They tell you to go here and do this. You go there and the options given do not even agree.

For example, you ask about network printers troubles and they direct you to print and file sharing but do not tell you what you need to do specifically to connect to a network printer. This harkens back to the worthless instructions given in windows 3.1, etc.

 

[Tim Frank]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

I'm sure you are correct. It is a relatively new computer and my daughter has been away at school. She had printed from this station, using an older IBM laptop with XP. I am sure that she has used the wired connection with this computer but never printed from it.

The computer name on my computer is 'family-computer', the workgroup name is WORKGROUP.

Ok, so you need to run the "network setup wizard" or whatever it is called in Vista, and add the Vista computer to the Workgroup. Forget about adding the printers until that is done.
That "station" is not locked in in any way to the network you still need to setup the specific computer...and i am assuming you are using a router as the hub.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Who knows what it is called in Vista. There seems to be a lot of change for change sake in Vista compared to XP. One of my pet peeves, ie, change for change sake.

I am exhuasted at running back and forth, from one end of the house to the other, to try and look at all these things. I do not think I saw any thing like the XP network setup wizard but there might be something there. All that I have seen them talk about is wireless stuff.

 

[i386]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

jlinder and Tim Frank are steering you in the right direction...


Historically, getting file sharing to work in a peer to peer network (that's what you have) involved making sure all the computers have a unique name and are in the same workgroup.

The network setup wizard attempts to help the novice user by somewhat automating the process. From what I've seen in XP, it actually works pretty well. Vista, well that may be another story. You will want to run that wizard or its equivalent in Vista. All computers need a unique name and must be in the same workgroup (or whatever they call it in Vista).

One would think that looking in My Network places / Network Neighborhood would be a good indicator to verify if all the computers in the workgroup see each other. It's not! I won't go into why (it doesn't really matter), but it can take a long time for all the computers to show up in there if they ever show up at all. But the good news is what jlinder said is right on the money. Start -> Run \\computername<enter> will show you the shared resources on that computer. Start, run, whack whack, computername. That's what us computer nerds call that maneuver.

If that doesn't show you the shared resources (folders and printers), then something needs to be configured correctly.

Windows firewall, zone alarm, etc... can and will throw additional monkey wrenches into the mix. It's best to disable those until your filr and print sharing is working and then add them back incrementally.

 

[4JawChuck]

Re: Help with adding a printer?

Start here;

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-vista/Install-a-printer-on-a-home-network

Have you tried the add printer wizard?