Vista Business shared printer

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ghostchamber

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 19, 2003
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One of my company's customers has a Windows Vista Buinsess machine with a locally attached HP printer. This computer is part of a Server 2003 domain, and printer sharing is enabled. The computer is listed in Directory, however, whenever I try to connect to it from a workstation (or even the server), I get an error message stating that the computer cannot connect to the printer.

I have a similar problem on my home network: I've got a locally attached printer on my Home Premium box that my wife cannot print to from her XP box. She can print to it from her Vista laptop, however.

I've done a bit of searching and I haven't come up with a solution. Does anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT:

Firewall is disabled on the Vista Business workstation. Forgot to mention that.

Here's what I have tried: From the server, clicked "Add a printer," then select "Locally attached printer." From there, choose "Create a port," and when prompted for the name, I put in the UNC: \\computername\printername. I also tried selecting network printer and browsing to the computer, and also using the UNC.
 
If you don't have the proper drivers installed, for the correct OS, you won't be able to install the printer as a shared printer. That would explain why your wife's Vista computer can print to it, and not her XP machine.
 
On my home network, I did install the XP print driver for my Vista printer on my wife's XP machine. It still did not work.

EDIT:

I also just tried this from the server. I downloaded the Server 2003 driver for said printer, then installed it manually by browsing to the .inf file. Then I tried to add it over the network and I got the same error.
 
The default driver windows will try to use is what's loaded on the Vista Box. If your PC isn't a Vista machine it will have issues. The work around is to map an LPT port to the printer and then point a local print driver to the LPT port.

First run:
Net Use lpt2: \\hostPC\Printershare /persistant:yes

Now start the add a printer wizard, select local printer (turn off autodetect), point to LPT2: then select the proper driver.

That should get you working.
 
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