Cant get my printer to work on the network?

Question

I have a tower running XP and hard wired to a speedtouch router. I have a laptop running Vesta connected to the router wirelessly. Everything is working tickerty boo until I try and get clever and create a network. Do I have to load all the drivers etc of my printer onto my laptop to get it to share wirelessly? any tips hints etc will be gratefully received.

Jim

Answer 1

This depends on your printer. Check to see if it is wireless enabled. I can check for you if you post the maker and model. If it is not wireless enabled check for networking capabilities, which I can also do. If it is not wireless or network supported things can get complicated. Then, yes, you will need to install the printer driver on either your tower or laptop (whichever you want the printer to be connected to via USB). Then you will need to setup a network. I believe the name is "Network" in the Vista start menu (I don't use Vista.) You will need to configure a network. I'm not sure if this will work on Vista but in XP, when you install the printer and click "Printers and Faxes" in the Start menu, right click, hit "Sharing", and select "Share this Printer", it prompts you to setup a network. If you choose to network the printer to the tower, you will not have to install the driver on the laptop. Once you create the network, you will have to create the same network on the other computer. With XP, when the wizard completes, it prompts you to load a setup program onto a flash drive so you can run it on a different computer. If you'd like me to take some screenshots from XP I can.

There is 1 more way to do this, but it requires money. You can buy a wireless switchboard, which aren't necessarily cheap. I configured my network with an XP laptop connected to the printer and a Vista laptop printing (I no longer use the Vista computer.) This seems like the configuration you will want to use (connect the XP tower to the printer and print from the Vista laptop).

Good luck!

Ryan