Printer sharing help

bestyman

Hi all,
I have a PC upstairs on XP wired to a router and I also have a dell laptop on vista that connects wirelessly to the internet . I installed vista on the dell laptop myself a few months ago and set up for the laptop to print from the printer connected to the pc upstairs.

Im not sure exactly how I set it up but I didnt have any problems. The dell Laptop still prints ok to upstairs.

I now have a sony laptop also on vista and I have spent the last 3 hours trying to set up printer sharing. I got it on the net in minutes, I simply put in the passcode in the conection box.

I have the 2 laptops side by side and I cannot find out why one will print and the other will not . The sony one will not even see the printer . I have set up network discovery and dont know where I am going wrong .

Any ideas please?

Browntoa

firewall blocking it ??? , you need to allow all trafiic via the Wireless Network card

KILL_BILL

have you set up rinter sharing on the laptop in question ?

can u see the other computers on the network

if so browse to that computer from the laptop and then click on the printer that is attached to it

it should then download the drivers to the laptop

i too have found that vista and xp and printer sharing was a nightmare at first

bestyman

Thanks all.
Both firewalls turned off

I cannot see the other computers on the network - this is where the problem is . I cannot remember how I did it last time and when I go to networks in CP Im not sure exactly what I should do .

The dell laptop can see the other computers on the network .

What exactly do I have to do to add the new laptop to the network? Do I have to make a USB Flash drive code thing?

I assumed that as both PCs are conected to the same internet connection they are already connected but am I wrong?

Thanks

CrispyUK

You need to make sure both laptops are in the same workgroup, it's not required for internet access but would need to be set correctly for file/printer sharing - this might explain why you can't see the other computers from the Sony.

Go into Control Panel on both, switch to Classic view and select 'System' - it's under the Computer Name or Identification tab on XP, it's all on the same screen in Vista, if they're different change the Vista laptop workgroup name to match the XP one.

bestyman

Cheers all got it sorted now.
In the endi ran the wizard on the xp machine then put the xp disk in the vista machine and ran it again. Not sure if this is the best way but it now works fine.
Thanks
Mark