I have a Homegroup set up on a desktop at my house running Windows 7 Professional (32 bit). It is an HP printer (hp psc 1350 all in one). My girlfriend also has a Homegroup set up at her house. When she brings her laptop over here to do work, she is not able to properly connect to the printer and print from it? Is there a way to share the printer with guests? Does she have to join my Homegroup to use the printer?
Depends on how the printer is hooked up to your network.
Is the printer hooked up to a computer via USB, to the router via USB on a print server port, or to the router with an RJ45 (Cat5) cable.
to the computer via USB. router has USB but it's for mass storage devices only.
From Help and Support in your Start menu:
Access files and printers on other homegroup computers
Before you can access files or a printer on another computer, you must add that computer to your homegroup. Computers that belong to your homegroup will appear in Windows Explorer. For more information about adding computers to your homegroup, see Add computers to a homegroup.
To access files or folders on other homegroup computers
1. Click the Start button , and then click your user name.
2. In the navigation pane (the left pane), under Homegroup, click the user account name of the person whose files you want to access.
3. In the file list, double-click the library you want to access, and then double-click the file or folder you want.
PS: Look it up on your own system, then the links will work.
I agree, she will need to join the Homegroup by typing in the Homegroup password and also install which ever drivers are needed for the printer to print.
As an alternative you could share the printer via the older "workgroup" system ensuring that the printer is shared using advance sharing with everyone.
She would need to change her workgroup to the same as the PC sharing the printer but this may be less complex than constantly changing homegroup
I thought as much. Hoped there was some simpler answer out there. Kinda sucks. I know with Windows 7 Professional and above you can set different default printers for different networks. She has Home Premium though. You'd think that as we are in the portable age, using printers in different places would be made simpler, hopefully in the future. Thanks for your time.
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