Anyone else had problems sharing printers in winxp

[just1tree]

I have 3 systems networked at home, and they all run winxp. I have set my printer up to be shared but I can't seem to get it to print from any computer but the first. Let me know...

[Bahamut Zer0]

Yep, i used to get this problem as well. I unshared the printer, then re-shared it with a sharename containing no spaces.

Windows XP should of had no problems reading it though, I know Win9x has issues when reading shares with spaces and more than 25 chars or something.....

If that doesnt work, unshare the printer, then run the network setup wizard and tell it you wanna share printers.

[fragman]

XP should auto install any shared printers it finds, if it didn't then definitely check your sharing and make sure there are no spaces in the share name.

[Darthtanion]

On a similar note, I have tried to connect to a pair of network printers at work and have had no luck at all. I finally just brought in an old laser from home and am using it as a non-networked printer so I can at least have something.

The system has WinXP Pro and works fine with the networked. I can connect to all of my shared drives, I have full use of the email server, and I have no troubles connecting to the Internet. But when I try to connect to the network printers, I get an error message saying that I was not successful. So I tried loading the drivers myself, but then I still can't access the printer. Now it says that it can't find WinXP drivers, but I just installed the damn things myself!

Though I do not log into the system as the primary Administrator of my machine, I do have full Administrative privileges, so the loading of the drivers shouldn't be an issue.

Oh... and the printers work just fine because I can print to them from other terminals that use either Win95 or Win98SE.

Any ideas? I love XP, but I'm not fully up to speed on it's networking capabilities and this is driving me crazy!

[Bahamut Zer0]

Yeah it gives me the ****s too.

Most cases you just right-click the network icon in systray and select disable. Do this AFTER you have
a) Run the network setup wizard OR
b) have manually configured settings

wait a few seconds while XP disables the network card, then open your network connections control panel, right-click your lan connection and select Enable. XP will force-refresh any network values from network servers and renew connection info about your devices. (first step of disabling flushes all values)

Quicker way is simply right-click the tray icon and select Repair...it doesnt seem to be as effective as dis/reenable though, but sometimes it works.

Try the info I posted in my first reply Darth, i had the exact same problem as you are having, and those steps fixed it up for me.

[just1tree]

My experience with windows 2000 and windows NT, to windows xp have shown various advantages and disadvantages in networking apects. With winnt you could browse a network much faster than any windows environment, windows nt and 2000 are much slower in this regard. Windows 2000 is much freindlier in sharing printers and internet connections. Windows xp allows for better internet, however browsing and hardward sharing just doesn't cut it. And in response to the automatic detection of printers in windows xp: Yes winxp does automatically detect printers on the network, however if you try to print to a printer installed on another machine on the network using this method, it just sits in the queue as an error. I have tried installing the drivers on the local machine also with no success. I like windows xp for its flexibity and features, but they should have tested its functionality a little more.

[Darthtanion]

I'll look into the spaces in the names deal, but I think that this afternoon, we will try hooking into the printer by directing it straight to the network printer's IP address and see if we can get it going that way. If I find out anything interesting or helpful, I'll post it here.

[Darthtanion]

OK... there are no spaces in the names of the network printers. Also, the release of the NIC didn't do any good either. We thought of a possible issue, though, so anyone with any experience in this give me some input...

Our server is based on a WinNT 4 system. We have discovered some incompatibilities here and there, so I'm wondering if I'm going to have to create a dedicated print server based on Win2k or newer to use with all of our new WinXP machines? Let me know your thoughts on this and tell me if I'm off base here.

[Bahamut Zer0]

Print Server is just a bit of software, so it should just run from the NT4 machine. There *may* be incompatibilitys between NT4 and XP machines, im not entirely sure. Most installations ive done the client has opted to remove the NT4 machine and replace it with the now outdated Win2k box. (with WinXP clients)

After we got rid of the NT4 box, everything was fine, however- everything was fine before until the XP boxes were introduced into the network. So im not sure what was going on here, I havnt the time/space/resources to setup a small LAN and slap a nt4 server together to fully test it.

WinXP has a fussy driver scheme, if say, your NT4 server is sharing the printer, and those drivers arent WHQL then XP will refuse connection to it. (as Windows will deny the installation of non-WHQL drivers)
You can disable this behaviour in the system control panel on the XP box. Load up NT4 and make sure it is sharing drivers suitable for win2k/XP, then try to reconnect to it from the XP box.

[just1tree]

On my LAN at work, the local area server running winnt 4 server has all of the printers installed on it. The printers are hp 5si's and the like, and all of these printers are installed using a network connection to a condenser. The ports are configured with the drivers installed on the server. The drivers used are in fact winnt drivers. Now all of the client workstations are running windows 2000. So as long as the printer is configured with the correct printing language i.e. PCL 6, the win2k clients can print to the printers, even tho the drivers are for winnt. I am not exactly sure about how winxp would react in that regard.

[Bahamut Zer0]

Thats prolly cause NT4 drivers are (sometimes) usable by Win2k. I know XP has a few problems when using drivers designed for NT4, and for good reason- the kernel for NT is pretty old and alot has changed since then, especially with hardware interaction. This is the main reason clients of mine scrap their NT4 servers and replace em with 2K/XP boxes. Simple solution is of course just bring up the properties for the shared printer, tell it you wanna share it for Win2k and supply the latest driver files from the manufacturer. That fixes Printers, but not the various other problems one could get with NT4/Win2k/XP interactions.

(NT4 support has been discontinued too, so little luck in getting fixes or updates from MS)