BleepingComputer.com: Setting Up Wireless Printer Sharing Question

I have a question I hope someone can help me with. I have set up a wirless network for a friend who has a doctor's clinic. He is running a desktop with Windows XP Professional. Physically attached is a HP All In One Printer. I've set the office to run wirelessly and he has a Dell Inspiron Laptop with Windows 7. I HAVE been able to set his Inspiron to print wirelessly. Now he also has a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows XP home. the printer is recognized and set up to share but it just won't share the printer. I installed the printer drivers for XP on the laptop running XP but this just didn't fix the problem.

To further confuse things I previously set up a wireless network at his home. He is running Windows XP home edition on his desktop which is connected to a DIFFERENT printer. The XP Laptop performs perfectly in printing wirelessly at his home.

On the XP laptop I have tried to set the default printer to the HP printer he is running at the office (I did this to see if by setting the default to the printer on his xp laptop he would be able to print wirelessly at the offrice!!) Now he is unable to print on his network at home.

Is it possible to set up one laptop that can be used both at home and at work to run print wirelessly on two different networks on two different printers.

I sure hope someone can help untangle this problem. Thanks inadvance for any and all help.

Have you gone over...

How to Share Printer in Windows XP - http://www.home-network-help.com/share-printer.html

Share Your Printer Over a Home Network Using Windows XP - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/n...cutt_july2.mspx

Step By Step Share a Printer on Your Home Network - http://lifehacker.com/software/step-by-ste...work-309015.php

Louis

I've gone through the material you posted (had already been through many sites that were supposed to assist with setting up a wireless network!)

None have accurately answered the problem that I am having. What I want to know is if you can have a laptop that would recognize a printer on a wireless network at work and then be able to go home and also print wirelessly on a different network that has been set up for wireless printing. There are two hp printers (not the same model) The laptop would run Windows XP

so.

Are you sharing the printer at the office via a win7 system? or is it a network printer (with it's own ip)

On a homogeneous xp network both printers should be recognized and usable as shared. On any system I have set up using a win7 connected printer as the share, I have had inexplicable print failures and errors. There are a lot of google sites that address this issue. Some work, some don't and some work until the next reboot.

Probably because the printer drivers for several older AIO hp printers are either not available or don't work as advertised on win7/vista. (note the spelling of several of the error messages in the drivers seem to indicate Bangalore programming by committee)

Also note, HP drivers for the AIO versions have become such massive bloatware that one failed install can bugger the system so bad only an OS reload can fix it. I now only use the bare drivers where available but some of the newer AIO's have only the CD sized crapware download available.

If you can convert each printer to a network printer by adding a dedicated print server (or in some cases correctly configuring the wireless software to talk to the core router) you should be able to print to whatever printer is on each network. In a few cases, I had to reset the printer networking to defaults (previous geeksquad failure) before it could be reconfigured as a wireless network printer.

Post the printer models and how they are connected to the network and maybe we can get to the root of this issue.

Also note, the default printer does not change automagically. When you switch networks you need to set the printer on the local network to be the default. You may be able to change this by setting a hardware profile on the xp laptop.

On networks with a domain controller this is done with Active Directory or something similar.

BTW most printers I have setup in production environments use ancient Dell p-3s as linux printservers. They are damn near bulletproof and can share several different ways.