Confused

R

realdiehl

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2002
Messages
175
Hey all,

Here is my situation. I work a lot from home and the office. My company gave me a laptop since I float between locations. When I'm at the office, I can go in and add nearby printers. When I'm at home, the only way I can print is to disconnect my printer from my desktop computer and plug it into my laptop. What I'd love to do is be able to print from my laptop to my printer that's still hooked to my computer.

I've got both my computer and my laptop hooked up to a router. Normally, I would just share my printer and everything would be easy. However, since my home computer is setup for a workgroup environment and my laptop is setup for a domain environment, it's not working as easy as I hoped. Both machines are running XP pro.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this to work? Thank you very much in advance. Let me know if you need any more information.

Kurt
 
You should still be able to search the computer name that has the printer hooked to and then add the printer. The thing is that you will have to attach it everytime you bring your laptop home, it will look like its there but it usually wont print. I ran into this issue when I setup a domain in my house except the printer was in my domain and I had to print from a workgroup computer.
 
sliperypete said:
You should still be able to search the computer name that has the printer hooked to and then add the printer. The thing is that you will have to attach it everytime you bring your laptop home, it will look like its there but it usually wont print. I ran into this issue when I setup a domain in my house except the printer was in my domain and I had to print from a workgroup computer.
Click to expand...

See I thought so too! However, when I attempt that, it comes back saying that it doesn't exist. Any thoughts?
 
Turn on printer and file sharing on the desktop, then share the printer. It should show up in the Network after that.
 
ryan_975 said:
Turn on printer and file sharing on the desktop, then share the printer. It should show up in the Network after that.
Click to expand...

I apologize, I didn't make that part real clear. I've already done that part. Getting the laptop to see it is the hard part. It's not automatically showing up and any attempt to manually access it is failing.

On another note, I can ping the desktop from the laptop. So at least there is some form of communication!
 
Can you ping the computers ?

Go the the desktop, start, run, cmd
Then type ping and then the IP address of the laptop

Then do the same from the laptop, ping the desktop
 
realdiehl said:
I apologize, I didn't make that part real clear. I've already done that part. Getting the laptop to see it is the hard part. It's not automatically showing up and any attempt to manually access it is failing.

On another note, I can ping the desktop from the laptop. So at least there is some form of communication!
Click to expand...

I've always had a lot of problems with peer to peer networking in XP. And it's usually that it works for a while, then all of a sudden it quits working and takes me having to completely redo the network configuration over again before it'll work again. So good luck.

A couple things make sure they have the same workgroup name, and that the builtin firewall isn't causing the problem.
 
ryan_975 said:
I've always had a lot of problems with peer to peer networking in XP. And it's usually that it works for a while, then all of a sudden it quits working and takes me having to completely redo the network configuration over again before it'll work again. So good luck.

A couple things make sure they have the same workgroup name, and that the builtin firewall isn't causing the problem.
Click to expand...

yeah i turned the firewall off already...

as far as the workgroup goes, this is where i'm having the problem...because both devices are configured differently...one is on a workgroup setup...and the other is on a domain...trying to get those two to talk is the hard part.
 
realdiehl said:
yeah i turned the firewall off already...

as far as the workgroup goes, this is where i'm having the problem...because both devices are configured differently...one is on a workgroup setup...and the other is on a domain...trying to get those two to talk is the hard part.
Click to expand...

XP Pro is supposed to detect whether or not it's on a domain at boot time and automatically configure the system for what it finds.
 
ryan_975 said:
XP Pro is supposed to detect whether or not it's on a domain at boot time and automatically configure the system for what it finds.
Click to expand...

lol..."supposed to" and actually doing it are two different things i guess! :p
 
So I assume the laptop is the domain.

I have my printer hooked up to a desktop PC and its shared from there. Then, on my domain account, to use the printer, I goto printers and faxes, choose add new printer, select network printer, then click connect to printer without putting a name in, click next, and then under microsoft windows network I have my domain for the domain PC and then WORKGROUP. In workgroup it lists the PC name of my pc where the printer is and I open that and there is my printer.
 
YARDofSTUF said:
So I assume the laptop is the domain.

I have my printer hooked up to a desktop PC and its shared from there. Then, on my domain account, to use the printer, I goto printers and faxes, choose add new printer, select network printer, then click connect to printer without putting a name in, click next, and then under microsoft windows network I have my domain for the domain PC and then WORKGROUP. In workgroup it lists the PC name of my pc where the printer is and I open that and there is my printer.
Click to expand...
I got up to the point where you have your domain and workgroup listed. I have the domain listed, but not the workgroup. Is it possible I have to share it a different way? I went to the printer > sharing > share this printer > ok. Firewall is turned off. I can't figure out why it's not showing up!

Is it possible IT has set a policy that doesn't allow me to connect to a workgroup?
 
Ya I shared my printer the same way. I guess its possible that you could be restricted in some way. Shoot your IT an email.
 
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