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#1
Shared printer is recognized and connected, but not printing
I have an OKI laser printer that's USB connected to a Win7 Ultimate desktop computer. This is shared with a Windows XP desktop and two other Win7 laptops (Lenovo). The Lenovos are dual boot (7 + XP) but used primarily on 7. I'm not really sure whether this is the best section to post this issue, since it could be something other than a network and sharing issue. I've done this sort of thing several times over and never encountered the problem described below.
The XP computer can see the shared printer and print to it with no problem.
One of the two Lenovos (Win 7 Pro 64-bit) can access the printer with no problems. When I used Devices and Printers - add new printer it found it, went to fetch a driver from Windows Update and it worked within minutes.
The second (wife's) Lenovo is proving very problematic. Using the XP OS I was able to install and run the shared printer after installing the OKI driver and it works perfectly. However it's not playing ball at all trying to install and run it from Windows 7 (Home Premium 32-bit) that I am trying to persuade my wife to use.
Starting from "Install new printer" it found it immediately and I proceeded to set it up. The first surprise is that it spent some time in Windows Update but ended up saying it couldn't find a driver. (Odd, since the other Lenovo found one in seconds and installed it).
So I downloaded the driver from OKI, pointed it to the INF file and within seconds its said it had been correctly installed. Indeed the Printer Preferences box came up and all looked just fine. Then I came to print. All looked OK from the computer (printer showed "ready") - Word's progress bar whizzed across the screen and there were no error messages. But no print either
The printer queue showed "spooling" - for ages and it clearly wasn't going anywhere. Couldn't delete the queue either - so went through the usual procedure of stopping and starting the spooler service. But oddly, when I went into System32/Spool/Printer the offending file was not there (on the Lenovo) but it was on the Spool/Printer of the computer the printer is attached to so I stopped its spooler service and deleted from there.
But whatever I do I get the same result - nothing reaches the printer. (If I go back into XP mode on the same Lenovo, it still works fine).
When I look at the printer properties on the two Lenovos, they look absolutely identical. Same driver, same ports etc. I've tried Microsoft's "Fix-it" but to no avail.
I'm now completely stumped and my 72 year old head has lost a lot of hair this last two days Wife not impressed either!!
Can anyone point me in the right direction please?
Kind regards
John