Mac Wireles Sharing a Windows 7 Connected Printer

Zay -- You the man. Your instructions worked flawelessly for me. I finally have both mine and my son's MacBook Pro's printing on the family's Windows 7 machine.

-- AerixJ

I know this is an old topic, but I just thought I would give my answer.
I have a Windows 7 PC, and had a printer hooked up to it via USB. The PC is hooked to our router, and so are our two other computers.
My second computer is a PC running windows XP.
My third computer is a Mac.
I 'shared' our printer on our win 7, and so I could access it on our XP, but not on our mac. After hours of going through forum and forums trying every single thing that everyone said to do, I called Apple Support.
They told me that sharing a printer for a windows 7 to a mac wasn't they're problem and they said to contact my printer manufacturer. So I called HP, they told me that they couldn't do anything for me and that all I had to do was buy a wireless printer.
So I came I ended up coming to this conclusion:
Solution #1 - Buy an Apple AirPort router (it has a special printer share usb plug) (100$)
Solution #2 - Buy a wireless printer (ranges between 200$ - 400$)
Solution #3 - (what I did) (0$) Plug your printer via USB to your mac. Sharing with the windows computer then takes 30 seconds to set up. Just open Control Panel>Printers>Add printer (one of the buttons on the top). Then follow the onscreen instructions , Select network printer, (then it shows the computers on the network), select the one that you want, click next, install the appropriate driver, and BINGO! its done.
(This is assuming that all of your computers are already hooked up to your network)

Anyways,
Hope this helped,
PCgeek

I too, have gone through the same thing. Have recently added a mini mac with OSX 6.5.4 to the strictly windows 7 network, but for days have not been able to access the printer connected to my main desktop running Windows 7 64 bit, no matter what I did. . . .until now.

I activated LPD Print Services and LPR Port Monitor enabled on my Windows 7 host. Done through control panel, Programs and Features, Turn Windows Features on or off, Print and Document Services.
I made sure that the printer was actually shared by looking in Network, (not Homegroup) accessed through My Computer, and highlighting Network in the left pane. Did the Add a printer listed in the menu (even though I already completed these steps through Control Panel, Network and Sharing). Gave the printer a simple name, with no spaces and wrote down the information add a printer gave me when completed (e.g., \\windows7computername\printername).
Checked my IP address through ipconfig, and wrote is down, something similar to this: 192.168.1.xxx. (as it was needed for the address when setting up the printer on the Mac.

Made sure the Windows 7 host and its printer, a Canon (connected vis USB) were on.

On the mac, proceded to add the printer. Not sure of your OS on the Mac, but I have OSX 6.5.4.
Under System Preferences, click Print & Fax; click the + sign to add the new printer; added the Advanced Icon to the toolbar; Clicked Advanced; under Type, select LPD/LPR; leave Device box alone; Under URL, typed in something similar to this after lpd:// (which was already there) windows7loginnameassword@windowsmachineIPaddress/printername

For example: lpd://JaneQ.Geek:mypassword123@192.168.1.101/HP123

Named the printer, Printer (really exciting). Left Location empty, as I know where the printer is, and selected the appropriate dirvers by make and model from Print Using box. Clicked Add.

Did a test run. After hours of frustration, it finally worked for me.

Have to leave the host computer and printer on, of course.

I hope this is helpful, and nothing vital has been left out.

LRBTinker