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Sunday 23 November 2014

Sharing a printer

I recently set up a Windows XP box, for a particular purpose, and I want to be able to print from it. I already have a Windows 7 box with a couple of printers connected via USB mostly used for playing Civilization (sic)). You'd think it would be easy to share a printer between Windows machines.

The problem is that one is Windows 7, the other is XP. 7 wants to use Homegroups, XP wants to use Workgroups. I think these are two different things, but I'm not a Windows expert.

So I spent about an hour messing with this, and still failed to get either one working. Then I had a flash of inspiration.

I also have a Linux box with a printer. It took me about a minute to get the XP box to recognise, and use, that printer.


1 comment:

  1. You can use Workgroups in 7; click Start, type "workgroup" in the search box and you'll see the option to see the current workgroup. With that screen open you can change the workgroup to match what XP is in (most likely "MSHOME"). You'd still need to fiddle with network settings to allow the machines to see each other, and the printer, though. I make things easier by having a network printer, connected via lan cable to one of my network switches. It's visible across the network, so any of my machines can print to it (and using the magic of Google Print I can even print stuff from my mobile phone to it!).

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