Vista Printer Sharing Nightmare

[sintaxera]

OK, so I have a bit of a problem here.

I have a PC that is connected to two USB printers and runs Vista Business. It prints to both printers and runs great.

It shares printers fine with my wireless XP Pro netbook, and my wifes old wireless XP Pro laptop.

I just bought her a new laptop with Vista Home Premium, and it can see and share files across the network fine with my Vista Business machine. It can also see the Vista Business machines shared printers. Yet every time I try to connect or add them to the Vista Home Premium machine I get an "Access Denied" Error saying that the name isn't correct/valid. But it's there, it has the right name, and it can see it! Here are some other details:

Both Vista machines have:
Private network: on
Password sharing: off
File and printer sharing: on
Work group name: WORKGROUP
Both can share files with each other and access the internet fine.
Both are 32-bit machines.
Both have the necessary print drivers installed/available

Even if I install the drivers first on Home Premium machine (and try to make it use port \\Vista Business PC Name here\Printer Name Here), it won't connect or work!

When I try to add it using the method of installing it on Home Premium first, then changing the port to the format "\\Vista Business PC Name here\Shared Printer Name Here" It gives me a strange 0000x000079d (not exact) type error.

So, anyone have any suggestions. I've tried numerous wizards, walk throughs, FAQ's, and guides, all to no avail. I've searched many forums, and found some suggested solutions but none of them have helped. Please help me anandtech users, you're my only hope!

 

[mpilchfamily]

I suggest you try connecting the printer(s) in question directly to the laptop. Have it do a simple print job and then reconnect everything as is. Sometimes networking and be finicky. But once then laptop get dirrect connection to the printers then everything should fall into place. Don't know why it helps but it does.

 

[sintaxera]

Thanks for the reply. I tried what you said, and still no go. It gives me the previous errors I mentioned. The only thing I can think of trying is to take the new laptop to a friends place and try to join his Vista workgroup. If that works I will have at least narrowed it down to which PC is causing the problem.

 

[corkyg]

Vista Home is not always network friendly. Sometimes you have to install things in an elevated mode, i.e., as Administrator, and in some instances, take ownership of relevant folders and sub folders.