How do I set up my printer as a network printer on my home LAN?

[Felecha]

I have a Conon S300 USB printer connected to my desktop in my office downstairs. It's a custom built box, Athlon TBird 900, ABIT Kt-7, Windows 2000. My wife's printer in her office upstairs died, and we wondered if we could use my printer for both. Hers is a Dell Inspiron 1100 with Windows XP home. The home LAN is a LinkSys 4-port router, I did my own Cat5 cabling. I opened Printers in hers and tried to "add new printer", but just don't know what to do once I'm there.

Do I have to do stuff on the W2K box to designate it as a network print server or something like that? I really don't know much about it

 

[InlineFive]

On the host computer (with the printer) open the Printer and Faxes settings. Then right click the printer you want to share on the network and click Sharing... Enable sharing of the printer and type in a name for it to be seen as on the network. Once this has been successfully completed a small hand should appear under the printer.

Then on your wifes computer navigate to your computer on the network and click on the shared printer. It should ask if you want to install drivers and if you agree, it should be installed.

This is assuming that your computers are already sharing files on the network.

 

[Felecha]

OK, be right back.

Thanks

 

[Felecha]

Well, here we go. Even thought I installed my LAN myself (with advice from friends and this forum) I still dont understand it all.

I followed your instructions and shared the printer OK, I think.

But now her laptop does not even see my box, and vice versa. Often I have found that one or more machines on my LAN dont see each other. I have them all set to the same WORKGROUP (Susan has a different WORKGROUP at her job, and I know to reset it at home).

Nix that. I just added a wireless router a few days ago. She's spoiled with wireless at work. So I pulled the cable out of the wireless router and plugged it straight into her laptop port and now I can see my desktop from there. And I can see the Canon S300 listed as a printer there, too. But in the Add New Printer wizard, when I get to Browse ... it shows the tree down to my desktop, but says it cannot find any printer by that name. I typed "Canon S300" into the textbox at the top, since it was empty. It still failed to see it.

???