Correctly sharing a printer

[Bruck]

I have a home network setup. I have a printer attached to my win2k machine, and i have it shared. it is installed correctly and I can print on it , but after a reboot of both machines or sometimes one of them, the winxp machine can't print to the shared printer because it doesnt know the login and pw of the shared printer. Is there a way to hardset the user name? Not sure how to correctly set this up, it will work for a while, but then just when my gf needs to print and i'm not home it won't print.

 

[ToxicWaste]

since you aren't in a domain environment, you'll need to setup duplicate user account/passwords on both machines. So, if you log onto the machine that borrows the printer as bruck/nonoobs then, on the serving machine, there also needs to be a user created with the name bruck and the password nonoobs.

 

[martind1]

thats the way to do it.

identical username/passwords on the two machiens and this box shoudln't pop up for you.

good luck

 

[tooltime]

you need the same user and pw on all machines your connecting to in your network...if you have a (working) network you must already have this done?

right click the printer, go to sharing and then security. look at the Permissions for your login

 

[GTaudiophile]

Heh. I just had this problem too. Having the same user/pw for each machine fixes the problem. But doesn't that suck for security???

Let's say Computer A has a printer attached that is shared. Let's also say there is only one user account on A, Admin/foo. Now let's say Computer B has two accounts: Admin/foo and Guest/fee. Computer B uses the shared printer on Computer A. Now, if I am logged in on B as Guest/fee, can I still print without knowing the Admin/foo password for A?

 

[GTaudiophile]

Can anyone answer my last question?

 

[Fuzznuts]

if the guest has rights to the printer then yes if only administrator is allowed access to the share then no

you set the permissons on the share and via ntfs. the username and passwords oly have to macth becasue all accounts are seen as local to that machine. you can still apply permissons on a user by user basis once they are added.

Does this help?

 

[GTaudiophile]

I'm still a little confused. If I go to Computer A in the above example, go to Start>Settings>Printers>Right-click on the default printer, go to properties, security tab, I CANNOT give permission to another computer on the network. I can bring down a pull-down menu, select the name of my Workgroup, but nothing is listed. I would think that it should list Computer B and allow me to add it to the list of Permissions. Maybe I'm thinking wrong on that.

 

[Fuzznuts]

you use the local machine users and groups not the ones from the remote computers.

 

[alm4rr]

I have a similar question:

Small office, 4 computers

Can I print to the 1 printer connected via USB to computer A using computers B,C,D without it being a "networked" printer and without major hassles, or should I just buy a networkable printer?

Thx

(it's pretty similar question to the frist )

 

[skyking]

you can share it, by having regular users in the print server machine that match the users on the client machine, as lined out before. These regular users need to log into their machines and have the protocols for microsoft network enabled in -network connection-properties.

having a print server on the network is truly the thing to do though, and frequently you can hook an inexpensive used printserver, such as an HP 2591A, to a parallel laser printer for not too many $$
The USB print servers are a bit more expensive, but it is really nice to print anytime you want, without having to turn on the host computer or load it up with a bunch of print jobs.