'Access denied' when trying to access shared printer

[ScottyBaby]

My LAN has two Windows XP Professional boxes, as well as some laptops. I
have a shared HP LaserJet on one box that the laptops are able to print to.

For some reason, the newest XP Pro machine that I've added gets 'access
denied' when trying to print to the shared printer.

For simplicity, I'll refer to the box with the shared printer as 'Server'
and the new box as 'Client'.

I've found that if (on the Client box) I connect to a share on the Server,
such as C$, which requires me to authenticate using my account info for the
Server, then the Client can print. After some time (maybe after restart, I'm
not sure), I get the 'access denied' message again, and have to
re-authenticate.

Both machines are part of the same workgroup ('MSHOME').

I've seen some reference to this problem in various posts and web pages, but
haven't figured out what the problem might be.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

-Scott

 

[Ovidiu Popa]

Connecting to the C$ admin share requires administrator privileges. Once
that you got authenticated on the other box, your computer may print on the
remote printer, but not before. The admin account on the local box doesn't
have any rights on the remote box simply because it doesn't exist there.

The simplest idea is to create identical (username/password) accounts with
sufficient privileges (you don't really need to be an admin to print) on
both boxes.

If creating identical accounts is not an option, you may try to enable the
guest account on the remote box holding the printer - but as usual this may
have other security implications.

Ovidiu Popa
MVP