XP to 7 Printer sharing

Thanks Jimbo,

Worked for me. Then stopped several days later. Forgot where I found this info. Then found my way back here. Tried it again, worked just as well as it did the first time.

I'm suprized, though, with so many people miss-reading or not understanding your instructions, no one questioned what they should do when setting up the Win 7 driver on the Win 7 client machine and get to where they're prompted to "share" or "not share" the printer. I didn't see any posts about anyone's head popping-off and bouncing around while still attached by a limply-coiled spring.

jimbo45 said:

2) On the Network Browsing on your W7 machine ensure you can "See" the Printer share.

What if I am in the situation where no machine on the network can see the XP machine, including itself? The four Windows 7 machines are x64, some with SP1 and some without, all in the HP Pavilion family with a mixture of laptops and desktops. The Windows XP machine has SP3 and is a Dell Dimension E510 with Media Center. The XP machine has several hardware problems including the "Serial ATA (SATA-2) device not found" error on boot and a front USB port that kills the computer when connected. The printer is a Samsung ML-2571N, and the connecting router is a Linksys WRT54G v4.20.7.

All the machines have Windows Firewall as the sole firewall software. Disabling the firewall did not solve the problem. Disabling password-protected sharing did not solve the problem. Resetting the router did not solve the problem. There's a whole list of attempted solutions that failed to solve the problem that is so long I don't think I can remember them all.

Attempts to connect to the XP machine from any Windows 7 by \\XPMACHINE (where XPMACHINE is replaced with the XP's name) resulted in an error message:

Windows cannot access \\XPMACHINE
Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.
Error code: 0x80004005 Unspecified error

Diagnostics says "The remote device or resource won't accept the connection - Detected". Others have tackled my problem with little success (not that they were committed anyway). Maybe you'll be more successful?

I too am having problems sharing a printer from my XP machine to Win7. Each time I attempt to login from the Win7 machine, I get a login failure error. I have set it up to not require a name & password, but it still wants it. I have had the exact same results from my Vista machine as well. It doesn't matter whether I set the Vista & Win7 machines up to require or not require a username & password. They both still ask for it.
I can go to my XP machine and see the files on the Win7 machine & the Vista machine, but not vice versa.

I've noticed these things:

1. On my Win 7 Ultimate machine, if I reboot, it does not hold the local port I added for the shared printer on the XP machine. (local port: \\[xpmachine]\hpdj5740). However, the Win 7 Home Premium machine holds the port setting just fine.

2. The printer switches to "Offline" when I reboot the Ultimate machine.

3. I found that if I send a job to the printer before I re-add the port and set the printer to "Online", the job gets stuck in the queue and is difficult to clear. Once I clear it, add the port, and set to "Online", then it'll work fine until I reboot.

pikalax,

You may have already thought of this, but check that the workgroup entry is the same for all machines, and that the system clocks on each machine are synched to the same Internet Time Server (ex: time.windows.com).

System times are synched to nist.time.gov, and all machines are connected to WORKGROUP.

Pikalax,

I'd like to work with you on this. In fact, I started to write a check list for you then I thought we should probably start a new thread if we need to get get off the topic of printer sharing so that we don't highjack this thread.

I did start a new thread weeks ago, but no one helped me there. :O

I just joined this forum to thank jimbo45 for the solution provided in this thread. 2 new HP Win 7 laptops wouldn't connect to my old XP desktop printer even though they could see the printer. Also learned the meaning of "poodlefaking". I hope to learn a lot more down the road. Thanks again!

jiggy

Thanks Jimbo45 for the instructions in post #5.
I have an hp printer shared from an XP Home machine. The Win 7 machine would not print. I just wonder if after one of Microsofts updates this fix may stop working.
Thanks again.