I have a desktop running XP that is sharing a USB printer. This computer uses MacAfee Internet Security. I have opened the ports on the McAfee Personal Firewall to allow printer and file sharing and the MS Directory Service.
My laptop runs Vista and has NIS 18.5.0.125 installed. The laptop is connected to my wireless network. The desktop uses a wired connection to the router. On the laptop I can see the desktop machine in Explorer and the USB printer connected to it. I can also see the XP desktop machine in the NIS Network Security Map and it has a trust level of SHARED which as I understand it is all it needs for print sharing.
I can select the remote printer from the Vista laptop's Control Panel and see its properties. I can even submit print jobs from the laptop and see them enter the printer's job queue. However, the jobs are never visible on the printer's queue as viewed from the XP desktop. I'm getting an error message on the laptop that is displayed in the dialog associated with the printer's software (i.e., the one I would see on the desktop machine). The message says that the printer cannot communicate with the computer (note: printing from the desktop machine itself is working normally).
It seems that everything is in place for this to work but there is some communications problem. Disabling the NIS firewall did not solve the problem and neither did disabling the McAfee firewall.
Note: I did not try print sharing until after NIS had been installed.
Note: I have also tried disabling the Automatic File and Print Sharing in NIS to no avail.
Is there some other setting in NIS I need to change to make this work? Do I need to uninstall and reinstall?
I would be tempted to remove the printer from the laptop and reselect add a printer in vista and select network printer. Maybe its a driver error. Make sure you have the printer driver for vista available for this printer.
Thank you for your suggestion but the printer is not a network printer, that is, the printer is not directly connected to the network, It's connected to the desktop machine via USB. It's shared by the desktop machine which, as I understand it, is not the same thing as a network printer. I did elevate the the trust level for the desktop machine to FULL TRUST but that did not solve the problem.
I understand your configuration and that is why we were asking if you had added the printer to the Vista machine.
Even though physically connected to another computer, the Vista machine will need the printer drivers installed which is generally accomplished through the Add Printer Wizard.
Thank you for your suggestion but the printer is not a network printer, that is, the printer is not directly connected to the network, It's connected to the desktop machine via USB. It's shared by the desktop machine which, as I understand it, is not the same thing as a network printer. I did elevate the the trust level for the desktop machine to FULL TRUST but that did not solve the problem.
Thise are the conditions for the fix I suggested trying which is to install that printer on the PC to which it is not connected by USB but is linked to over the LAN -- if I understand your setup correctly it's identical to mine except I'm using WIN 7 where you have VISTA.
Since the LAN link is wireless via a wireless router then I'd suggest temporarily using a wired connection since, again, that seems more glitch free in setting up.
I understand your configuration and that is why we were asking if you had added the printer to the Vista machine.
Even though physically connected to another computer, the Vista machine will need the printer drivers installed which is generally accomplished through the Add Printer Wizard.
I was waiting for you to answer that before I offered any suggestions.
Open the control panel and go to "printers"
Then on the top bar click "add a printer" and choose network printer. The printer attached to the desktop should appear and then when it installs you should see it connecting and getting a driver.
When it's done, the last screen asks if you want to give it a different name, and it tells you the driver that was installed.
When it's done, if you right click on the pronter and select properties you now have several "tabs" to choose from. on the first tab there is a button to "print test page".
If that still doesn't work, I suggest you try sharing a folder in XP. If you can't share files or folders your not going to be able to share a printer.
Right click a folder or data drive in XP (Not the entire C drive) and select "properties" then click the tab "Sharing" and click the box "share this folder over the network". Give it a name and from from the vista system open up "network" and you should be able to click the desktop system and then see and access the shared folder.
