Win7 printer hint

[Paul D Smith]

Talk of the WinXP printer woes reminded me of a problem I had to fix recently. We have a printer attached to a WindowsXP box but we wanted to access it from a new Win7 box.

Try as I might I could not get it to work until I found a website which explained that I needed to plug the printer directly into the Win7 box, install the drivers, and then I could unplug it and configure it as a networked printer.

Simple but I was cursing a lot until I figured it out so I hope this saves someone the irritation.

Paul DS.

[Man at B&Q]

There's no need to plug the printer in to the Win7 machine. A simple google search leads to:

assume the computers are call XPMACHINE and W7MACHINE.

1) Ensure Printer on XP machine is shared - assume it's called SHAREDPRINTER.

2) On the Network Browsing on your Windows 7 machine ensure you can "See" the Printer share.

Now on the Windows 7 machine do the following (doesn't matter if it's X-86 or x-64).

3) Control Panel=3D=3D> add LOCAL (Yes LOCAL) printer. I know it's on a Network but hold your horses -- what we are actually doing is "Poodlefaking" the Windows 7 machine into thinking it's running the printer.

4) Create NEW port=3D=3D>Local port

5) Portname is \\XPMACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER

6) Now Windows 7 will load a driver and you'll be able to print on the XP machine.

Simple

MBQ

[Bill]

And, of course, if you use an elderly printer, you may have to update the list of printers.

Then, if it's like my Xerox that works on HP drivers, you see an enormous list where you have to remember that it's alphabetical so that Laserjet IIP comes after Laserjet III and they are both a long way after Laserjet 1000.