shared printer connection problem

[davexnet]

Hello - I guess this is the first time I've tried this and I can't get it to work.

On an XP box, I installed a local printer (HP Photosmart) connected by wifi.
It's working fine. I've have gone into the properties and have turned on printer sharing.

On a 2nd box (win2k), I have added a new network printer, pointed it to
\\pcname\printername.
the wizard asks me if I want to make it the default printer, I reply, yes, then the wizrd tells
me it has finished successfully.

However, I'm unable to print to it. If I right click it/properties it says "Driver settings
cannot be displayed. The driver for the specified printer is not installed. Only spooler
properties will be displayed. Do you want to install a driver now"

If I attempt to print from Firefox (for example), it fails with an "unknown error"

Perhaps I don't understand how it works. I though when you attempt to print as a
network attached client, it uses the driver in the host machine. The HP Photosmart
doesn't even have a win2k native driver.

Any tips appreciated.

 

[Fardringle]

Most of the time when you connect to a shared network printer, it will automatically install the driver for the printer on the computer. However, in my experience many consumer level HP printers don't like to behave as network printers and you have to install the drivers on each computer separately and then you will be able to print to the shared printer over the network.



What is the model number of the printer? If you can't find a Win2K driver for that printer on HP's site, then you might be able to get the XP driver to work (it might not even let you try to install the driver, but it's worth a try).

 

[davexnet]

Hi Fardringle,
thanks for your insights, I've never tried it before, so I don't have a
good frame of reference. The printer is the basic Photosmart D110A.

I did download the basic driver from the site, I'll give it a go.
The website specifically does not not mention Win2k - I guess I could give a try.
From the articles I've been able to find,
if you define a "local printer" it will ask you to add a driver. However, a local
printer can be on the network.

If that's so, what is the difference between that and adding a "network printer" ?

 

[Fardringle]

Printing to a network printer still requires print drivers on the local computer so that programs on the local computer know how to translate their information into something that the printer can use. When you connect to a network printer, the server computer that is sharing the printer will usually automatically send the required driver to the client computer so that you don't have to do anything special in order to print to it. But some of HP's home printers, especially the inkjet and multifunction printers, don't work with this feature for some reason and need to have the drivers manually installed (from the CD or downloaded from HP's web site) on every computer that will be printing to the shared printer.

I checked HP's downloads site and couldn't find a Win2K driver for that printer either. You can try the standard XP driver and it might work...

 

[davexnet]

I found this "event" in the event viewer, perhaps these files are
from the server PC, since I don't have HP on this box. It's event 20, source of printer:

Printer Driver HP Photosmart D110 series for Windows NT x86 Version-3 was added or updated. Files:- UNIDRV.DLL, UNIDRVUI.DLL, hpod1103.gpd, UNIDRV.HLP, hpod1103.vdf, hpod1103.xml, hpfsc101.dtd, hpfhl101.cab, hpfsm101.gpd, hpf3m101.gpd, STDNAMES.GPD, hpod110a.ini, hpfst101.dll, hpfui101.dll, hpfvu101.dll, hpod1103.dll, hpfev101.dll, hpf3r101.dll, hpfrs101.dll, hpfie101.dll, UNIRES.DLL, hpfpr101.dll, hpfpa101.vdf, hpfpa101.dll.

I'll try the XP driver tomorrow and I'll update this thread with the results.
Thanks for the continuing info.

EDIT - I may be able to get by without a driver in Win2k - the main usage is my
son and his MS Word documents. The printer has an email address associated with
it, it's HP's eprint facility. I can send the doc file as an email attachment
to the printers email address and a few seconds later it's printing. I tried it out,
it's formatted correctly and gets me out of a tricky situation. This is an
outstanding feature.