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General discussion

XP machine sharing printer

Aug 26, 2007 6:31AM PDT

Hello,

My father-in law has a new Compaq laptop running Vista Basic. I've never used Vista, but the fact that it's Vista "Basic" running all the usualy HP bloatware can't be a good thing.

His home desktop is a PC I built, running XP Home SP2. He has an Epson All-in-One attached via USB as his local printer on the XP machine.

He asked me to network his new laptop to allow him to print to his shared home printer... I discovered the laptop was Vista, which, again, I've have NO experience with. Ugh. Some time spent with Google offered suggestions, but nothing that worked.

Both PCs are using admin accounts (although the XP account is auto-login... he doesn't enter a password on startup), and both have the same workgroup. I cannot see the XP machine on the Vista laptop. I installed the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) XP patch. It does not appear to be a firewall issue on the XP machine, as the XP Machine is running ZoneAlarm with the firewall configured to allow for network access through the wireless router. I even tried disabling ZoneAlarm completely to no avail. I don't think the Vista firewall would prevent me from seeing the XP machine, would it?

I then tried adding the printer on the Vista machine as a "local" printer using \\computername\printername.... no dice.

Any suggestions... please?

Thanks in advance.

~Wayne

Discussion is locked

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I ran into this brick wall.
Aug 26, 2007 10:14AM PDT

Some owner had decided to just use the "administrator" accounts so it failed without much fuss. I created a new account on the XP machine (it has the printer) and shared the printer. Off to the Vista machine to create the same account name and password. On the new account the printer was in the network and hooked right up.

Sorry I didn't bother figuring out how to allow "administrator" only setups. (it doesn't make any good sense to do that.)

Bob

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solved it...
Aug 26, 2007 10:25PM PDT

Thanks.

It was a software firewall issue after all. I thought I had disabled the pre-loaded Norton Internet Security at start up... didn't see it there in the systray... but I guess it was still running.

I installed ZoneAlarm and then set exceptions to allow these two machines access port 445, and all is well.

I did use that trick of installing it as a local printer (new port, \\computer\printer), though.

This new HP machine, running Vista and TONS of preloaded bloatware, only cam with 512MB of memory! Grrrr. I disabled most of the bloatware and it's already running much better. Ordered another gig of RAM from tigerdirect, and he should be cookin'.

Thanks again.

~Wayne

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Thanks for the (firewall) report.
Aug 26, 2007 10:45PM PDT

It's still the top issue when it comes to sharing. No standards so some get upset when we ask about "did you check the firewall."

Bob