Network printers on XP

[Richard]

I have a network of 6 PC's, all running XP. I have two
printers connected to one of the machines and I am sharing
the printers for the other machines. I am finding
somewhat varying behaviour on the machines, related to the
shared printers.
In most cases, when I go to the Printers folder, expecting
to install a networked printer, the printers are already
there, or appear when I open the printers folder. In
these cases the printers are prefixed by "Auto".

Is there a feature in XP where machines pickup and install
any printers seen on the network?

However, I find that the behaviour is not entirely
consistant. Sometimes the printers appear, sometimes only
one. Sometimes I can delete them, sometimes not.

Can someone point me to a source of information on this
behaviour - so I can understand it?

Regards

Richard Tomalin

 

[purplehaz]

Yes xp has a feature to search the network for shared printers and
auto-install them. Like many programs it works ok, but not correctly all the
time. This setting is in folder options, view tab.

 

[Guest]

I had a similar problem for a while where I had all of
the hardware and configurations dset correctly, but I
then found that after installing the IPX protocol,
everything started to work fine afterwards, hope this
helps.