Printers on an ethernet cables network.

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a cabled network, my router is conected to my PC with an ethernet
cable, and my laptop is conected to the router with a Cat5e crossover patch
cable.

I have two HP printers which are not compatable if loaded on one computer,
if I install one printer on my laptop, and the other on my PC, do I need the
printer drives for both printers on both machines.

If I need the printer drivers on only one computer, how do I install the
second printer on each computer?

My OS is XP Home SP2, with IE7

Thanks

Joco (London)

 

[Jim]

Hi,

I have a cabled network, my router is conected to my PC with an ethernet
cable, and my laptop is conected to the router with a Cat5e crossover
patch
cable.

I have two HP printers which are not compatable if loaded on one computer,
if I install one printer on my laptop, and the other on my PC, do I need
the
printer drives for both printers on both machines.

If I need the printer drivers on only one computer, how do I install the
second printer on each computer?

My OS is XP Home SP2, with IE7

Thanks

Joco (London)

If you want to print to either printer from either computer, then you need
printer drives for each printer on each computer.
There may be a way to get around this, but you need to look for instructions
in the manual for your printers.
Jim

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

The drivers need to be installed on any machine that is going to use the printer, regardless of where that printer is attached. In XP, when you install a printer, you may be prompted to make drivers available to other machines, even for other OSes. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I prefer to use the manufacturer's installer and at the appropriate moment, point the installer to the shared printer. How you do that varies, but it's usually part of the initial dialogue. (Note: When you install a true network printer, one that stands by itself and is only connected to the network, that is usually called a "Local" printer by XP. The "on a network.." refers to shared printers on another machine. This illogical reality has caused me grief on more than one occasion -- I don't remember stuff to well.)

Note that there are two major ways to install a printer: Use XP's Add Printer, for which you only need the drivers, or the manufacturer's installer, which sometimes uses XP's Add Printer function and sometimes doesn't (at least not visibly.) Quite frequently, you can't decently use the simple method and *must* use the manufacturer's installer, in which case telling XP to share the drivers is useless.