Windows 7 - Having difficulty installing network printer

Ok, downstairs I have a desktop computer with XP Home. There is an old (but works GREAT) Epson Color Stylus printer connected to the parallel port. I also have a Canon Pixma ip4000 connected to the USB port.
Upstairs I have 2 XP Home laptops. They connect fine to my network and access share files and the shared printers. All is fine.
I used to have a Windows 7 laptop and I remember going through some stuff but eventually it worked just fine, acessing my shared files and printers.
Unfortunately, that laptop bit the dust. I bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop and so far all works perfectly EXCEPT I cannot get it to work with the printers. It accesses my network and shared files fine. I know it can be done because I did it before.
Here’s what I’ve tried. I went to networking and chose Add A Printer. I specified network printer. It found both printers. But when I try to add the selected printer, it says that it can’t find the driver. Frankly, I looked on my desktop computer and I can’t find it either. I can also look on my two XP laptops but I am not sure what to look for. I went to the manufacturers sites and was unable to locate a driver, but it should be on my computers, I would think.
I wish I could remember what I did about 3 years ago to get my Windows 7 to work with both computers.
Any ideas?
Mel

I'm having exactly the same problem trying to get Windows 7 to access my Brother HL-5050 which is on an XP computer on my local network.

The problem seems to be that Windows 7 fails to understand what kind of printer it is trying to find a driver for and ends up searching itself and Windows Update looking for a driver for "unknown" printer

I have manually loaded the correct driver, but Windows 7 refuses to use it because it says it isn't the correct driver for the unknown printer

When the &*^$%^&$%&^ folks at Microsoft decided to make Windows 7 "easier" to use, they removed the capability to manually tell the operating system which printer driver to use.

Your title is misleading a bit, but leads to a possible solution. I realize setting up a server at home isn't usually feasible, so in a case like this, I normally recommend getting an actual network printer. Printer sharing on client systems has always been troublesome. You can usually make it work with enough fiddling, but once you get over the permission hurdles, it comes down to getting the remote system to recognize the printer and let you load the appropriate drivers. I know that some non-network printers are not capable of being shared, and you'll find little help from the manufacturer's, if the printer falls into that category. I ended up selling an HP all-in-one to a friend just so I could get a network model.

If its any help, both canon pixma ip4000 and brother hl-5050 are incompatible with Windows 7 (as per the Windows 7 compatibility center).

Good find, Bill2. I'd give you rep for it, but I need to "spread it around".

Interestingly enough the Windows 7 Compability list does claim the HL-5050 is incompatible, BUT the site shows that this is based on information from the manufacturer. Meanwhile if you follow the Windows Compatability website link to the manufacturer you find that Brother lists that printer as being compatible and states that the driver is found in the automatic Windows Update drivers.