sharing a printer on one pc for my home network

[Jeff]

Need help please, I have 3 pc's at home that are all 2000
pro. All are connected to the internet with cat5 to a
router and all using DHCP. I can see all 3 pc's from
network neighborhood on all as well, but when i go into
another pc it asks me for a password, and i never set one
up.Tried sharing a printer on 1 pc and the printer is not
accessablr unless a password id given, is there anyway I
can do this sharing of my printer with all pc's with out
having to supply a password. If you can help please email
me i would be very gratefull, for I have been trying to
get this done for quite a while and its become a bad
nightmare.. Thank you in advance for the help.

 

[Cari \(MS MVP\)]

See Bruce Sanderson's page at
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterAllUsers.htm

 

[Jeff]

That seems like alot of work i'm not comfortable doing,
any other suggestions, as to making this work, with having
the other machines log in the one with the printer
attached.

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

If all the computers are Windows 2000 Professional, I would expect that you
would get prompted for a Username AND password, not just a password. Is
this the case?

On the PC with the printer, create a User Account that is the same as that
used to logon at the other computers and assign that user account the same
password that is used on the other computers.

Except for the Windows 9x series of OSs, when you attempt to connect from
one computer (client) to another computer (server) that has a share (folder
or printer), the target computer (server) attempts to "authenticate" the
user that is currently logged on at the client. This authentication will
fail if the client user's username is not known on the server computer, or
if the username is known but the password is incorrect. When this
authentication fails, the client computer presents the user with a dialog
box asking for a username and password.

With Windows XP, there is a setting that controls whether or not user
accounts with blank passwords can connect (from another computer) to shares
(folder or printer). This setting does not exist in Windows 2000 Pro. You
may find that the user accounts have to have a none blank password in order
to be able to connect remotely - I don't have any Windows 2000 Pro machines
to experiment with to check this out for you.

Another alternative may be to enable the Guest Account on the computer with
the printer. This will seriously decrease the security on that computer, so
it is not recommended. If you do enable the Guest Account, if the user logs
on at client computer with a user name that is known (e.g. Administrator) on
the server computer, the passwords will have to match (and probably be not
blank). The Guest account is only used if the user name on the client
computer does not exist on the server computer.

 

[Jeff]

Bruce,
Thanks for the help it worked out great. When I created
the users on
the pc with the printer, and gave that account the same
password I was
able to see it in the prnters page and test print. Guess I
never thought
about having to add specific users for it to work.
One other question if you don't mind, if my wife changes
her password
on her computer again will I have to change it on my pc as
well, or
should I check the box that says user can not change
password. Or will it
automaticly change on mine when she changes hers.

Thanks again for the help I really appreciate it.

Jeff

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

There is no automatic password synchronization. So, if your wife changes
her password on her computer, she (or you) will have to also change it on
the computer with the printer.

Or, you can turn on the check mark that prevents password changes, but:

1. this decreases security - passwords should be changed periodically
2. you will have to make the same setting on all computers with that user
account on them

This is situation because each computer has its own, independent, security
database. The way around this is to have a Windows 2000 Server configured
as a Domain Controller. Then, "domain" user accounts exist in one place and
can be used to get authenticated on any computer in the domain. However,
this is overkill for small networks like yours; setting up a Windows 2000
Domain (with Active Directory) is a non-trivial exercise.

 

[Jeff]

Thanks again Bruce, I had a feeling that is what the deal
was goning to be. I have already gone into the settings
and checked the setting for passwords so she doesn't
change it. as long as she doesn't give her password out I
think we will be fine. Can win 2000 pro be set up as a
print server itself or do i need to get 2000 server?
Again thanks for all your help..

Jeff Satz

 

[Jeff]

Oh, I forgot to ask one other thing, when I set her up on
my pc with her login name and password and tried to start
a few applications they wont run the installation, cause
she does not have admin rights on either machine, how do I
get this to work? I have tried adding her to the admin
group and then re-running the program but that didn't
work, and clicking on the properties and security tabs and
giving her rights that way, but still when office fires up
it cant find the path to the Doc And Settings\Admin\Temp
to find the files, I know I'm not doing something right.
Sorry this is not a printing issue, but could not find a
place in here that was related to this question.

Thanks once again for your expertiese.

Jeff

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

There is a difference between installing and running an application. If the
application is built "correctly", any user that can logon can run it.
Usually, to install an application, the logged on user needs to be a member
of the "Administrators" group.

If an application is already installed, any user should be able to use that
application - you don't need to install it again for another user. MS
Office is sometimes an exception; if you didn't install everything (e.g.
left some features for "install on first use"), Office will attempt to
install some things when a user uses Office.

By default, there is no group or user account called "Admin". Now,
probably, you are using "Admin" as an abbreviation for "Administrator" or
"Administrators" in your email note, but I'd like to make sure we are
meaning the same thing here.

When you add a user account to a group, that change will not take affect
until the next time the user logs on. This is because group membership is
cached during the logon process and that cache is not subsequently updated
until the user logs on again.

You don't say what folder you were "giving her rights that way" to or what
change you made. Unless you have "damaged" the permissions on some of the
folders, any user account that is a member of the local Administrators group
will have Full Control on most of the folders on the computer, including
Documents and Settings.