home network printing problem

[Guest]

I have a Home PC running Windows XP Home with a HP 3820 printer attached thru
the USB port. The printer is shared. The Home PC is on a Workgroup and
connected directly to the router.

I have a Work laptop running Windows XP Pro that is connected to my home
network thru a wireless card to the router. The Work laptop is on a Domain.

I have successfully installed the printer on my Work laptop, but have not
been able to print to it since and when I double-click the printer, the print
queue box displays "unable to connect". The host computer (Home pc) is on,
the printer is on.

 

[Guest]

Sorry for the double post. The system said there was a problem after the
first one and I thought I had to repost.

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

This should work - I do this at home often with a laptop from work that is a
domain member.

When you use the Add Printer wizard (on the work laptop) and add the printer
as a Network Printer, you should get prompted for a username and password.
On that dialog box, there is a check mark for "remembering the password".
If this is not checked, the work laptop will not be able to authenticate
with the home PC.

You should be able to get around this. On the work laptop:
1. open a Command Prompt (e.g. click Start, Run; key cmd; press Enter)
2. key the command:

net use \\homePCComputerName\IPC$ homePCuserPassword
/user:HomePCusername

in the above:
homePCComputerName is the computer name for your home PC (right click on
My Computer, select Properties, select the Computer Name tab)
HomePCusername is the username you use to logon to your Home PC with, or
some other user account you have created
homePCuserPassword is the password for HomePCusername

Then try and use the printer again.

Now, if the user account's password is blank, this may not work, because, by
default, user accounts with blank passwords can not connect over the
network, although they can logon locally.

You can create a user account with Control Panel, User Accounts.