Connecting to a Win XP Shared Printer in Win 10

[markta1b]

I have a non-TCP/IP laser printer shared over my flat home network via Win XP Professional. The XP Computer Name is Gateway-M255E (XP Work Group MSHOME), and the printer Share Name under XP is HPLaserJ. Is it possible to print from Win 10 to this printer, via the network printer sharing facilities of Win XP?

If so, how would I go about doing this (using a Win 10 computer)? Thank you! MarkT

 

[Bree]

Welcome to Seven Forums, though perhaps the sister-site Ten Forums would have been a better place to ask.

XP only supports the SMB 1.0 protocol. It should be easy enough to connect from Windows 7, as W7 supports SMB 1.0 and 2.0. But in Windows 10 (or higher) SMB 1.0 is deprecated and turned off by default. To enable connecting from W10 to an XP machine you have to enable SMB1 on the W10 machine. Do this in 'Turn Windows feature on or off'. You only need the 'SMB 1.0/CIFS Client' for W10 to be able to connect to XP.



You may get some pointers from this thread, and if you cannot print directly, then my suggestion in post #6 may help. You could always print to pdf in W10 then send the file across the network to the XP machine and print it from there.

cannot print to shared XP printer from 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

[markta1b]

Thanks so much for the reply, Bree! I've enabled the [FONT=&quot]SMB 1.0/CIFS Client, as you outline, and will experiment with it soon.

> [/FONT][FONT=&quot]perhaps the sister-site [/FONT]Ten Forums [FONT=&quot]would have been a better place to ask.

Doh! I do have two Win 7 machines that I need to connect to this printer also. In the meantime I've studied the Ten Forums link you cite above, and like the original poster there, I really do need to go through the XP box, rather than trying to jury-rig a direct network connection for the printer.

Stay tuned for an update. Best regards, MarkT[/FONT]

 

[samuria]

When you connect to a printer it send drivers to the pc problem being xp wont have any drivers for new pcs so you may have to install drivers first

 

[markta1b]

Thank you, Samuria. I'm not trying to connect *directly* to the printer in Win 10; rather, I am needing to connect to the shared printer services being offered by the XP box. The latter has all of the necessary drivers and communications protocols (non-TCP/IP) to print via the network to my old but superbly functioning laser printer.

Does that make sense? Best regards, MarkT

 

[markta1b]

Connecting to a Win XP Shared Printer with Win 7 Professional (64-bit)

It's appearing that Win 10's print facilities will not support printing to my vintage HP LaserJet 6MP, but I was able to download and install (to a Win 7 PC) the generic ("universal") PostScript drivers suggested by a support specialist at HP; then connect the shared printer to a Win 7 Professional (64-bit) Gateway E4150 desktop/tower; and, finally, print test pages from that computer.

Here's the link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-universal-print-driver-series-for-windows/4157320

The driver that was found and used for my installation was for the "HP LaserJet 6P/6MP PostScript" - apparently meaning that this older printer *was* still being supported by HP, under Win 7.

However, when I went through the same procedure with another computer running the identical version of Win 7 Professional, the result was "No driver found." (I tried locating it manually, to no avail.)

I uninstalled the package, re-booted the PC, and then went through the whole download/install process again, with the same negative results. Is there some obvious (or not-so-obvious) reason that this should work on one Win 7 box, but not the other one?

Any suggestions will be most appreciated. Thank you an best regards, MarkT