Printer sharing

[UKDEB]

Aaaaaaargh! This is driving me mad. I have one printer between my personal Dell desktop and my work Dell laptop. They're totally independent of one another - not networked. Up until now, I've been able to share the printer by simply switching it on and off depending on which PC I needed to print from. A little bit irritating, but I can live with it.

I've just got a new work laptop which is connected to the printer via a docking station (with a standard parallel printer cable), as it has always been. The desktop is connected via a USB cable. I can print from the laptop, but not from the PC. The PC thinks the printer is there, but the printer isn't acknowledging the PC. Even undocking the laptop and disconnecting the cables doesn't make any difference.

Any suggestions?

 

[AndRu]

So ... if I have this right, you've connected the PC and the laptop to the printer at the same time? From the laptop docking station via a parallel cable and from the PC via a USB cable?

Hmm. If that's right I've not come across that setup before in 15 years of IT work! I'm not saying it won't work, it just seems unlikely that it would. The way I see it is that the printer would be looking to recieve input from either the USB or the parallel cable - not both if they're plugged in at the same time.

Have you installed the printer driver on both the laptop and the desktop machines?
Have you enabled File & Printer sharing? This is done by right clicking on the printer in the control panel. Select Properties. Click the Sharing tab. Click the "Share this printer" button and OK. It might not be necessary to do this but you never know.

For a short term fix I would take the parallel cable out of the picture completely and just try connecting the printer to one machine at a time using the USB cable - including a reboot the printer. Hopefully, this might get the printer to recognise it's connected to a different machine.

Personally, I would consider connecting both the laptop & desktop machines to the printer by USB with a hub like this one. Either that or connecting your desktop and notebook onto a network via router. You would only have to run one USB cable to the printer (say from the desktop), enable File & Printer sharing in XP and you should be able to print across the network. Admitedly this is a tad tricker to setup but it's worth it in the end!

 

[UKDEB]

Thanks, AndRu. You're analysis of my set-up is spot on and it was working until I picked up the new laptop. The driver is installed on both. The problem with the work laptop is that I don't have Administrator access and many of the functions (such as printer sharing and networking) have been disabled. The keyboard of my desktop also acts as a USB hub, so will give that a go. Thanks again.