Sharing Printers XP / W7 / W8

Hi folks

Now that people are moving from XP to W7 / W8 perhaps a little help on sharing printers between XP / W7 / W8 might be helpful. The method isn't intuitive so follow the instructions.

Printers attached to XP computers with either X-64 or X-86 versions of Windows 7 is SIMPLE. These instructions are for the Printer attached to the XP machine (but works in reverse as well).

For W8 the instructions are IDENTICAL as for W7.

("Stand alone" Network printers can be done slightly similarly
BTW).

assume the computers are called 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 (or W8) machine
ensure you can "See" the Printer share.

Now on the Windows 7 / 8 machine do the following (doesn't matter if it's X-86 or
x-64).

3) Control Panel==> 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==>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

(For a "Network stand alone printer") at 4) chose TCPIP port
and at 5) enter the IP address.

If the printer is on the Windows 7 machine and you want
to print on the XP machine then do the same instructions on the XP machine --

port name in this case will be \\W7MACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER

Hope some of you find this useful.

If you have a W7 / W8 x-64 machine and there's no printer driver for it then I'm afraid you are hosed up - similarly if the printer only has an XP driver you won't be able to share it with an x-64 system. In this case you''ll have to create a file and send it to XP for printing) - However a lot of printers even a few years old have both x-86 and x-64 drivers.

Cheers
jimbo

Where I ran into weird problems was with Epson Stylus C88 Ink Jet. It had a Vista driver in the firmware.
When plugged into the USB on a Vista machine the driver would load and be served over the network.
However if plugged into an XP or W7 machine access from the Vista machine would only show a generic printer.

There were no downloadable drivers to fix it up. Long story short, if you have or are buying an Epson stylus USB
printer check the driver info on their site. If the driver is only on the firmware make sure you can plug it into a machine
with that OS to get full function.

I hope they fixed this issue on the newer Epson machines. It's a good idea to find out first though.