how do i share printers in virtualbox in linux

my windows desktop recently crashed so my solution for making my un-supported peripheral devices work in linux is by using virtualbox running windows (the reason why i don't do a clean install of windows in the first place is because i can't afford another serial key and i don't want to go through all the trouble of trying to crack it, but how i got it to work in virtualbox is a big mystery but sure is convenient)

but regularly when you want to share printers in windows xp, the process is as easy as going into printers and faxes in the control panel, finding the printer you would like to share, right clicking the item, select sharing from the menu, and checking enable sharing in the windows that appears and giving your printer a name on the network

but i did that same thing and it didn't show up on other computer in the house running windows

before anyone mentions cups, these printers aren't compatible with cups but they work under virtualbox running windows,

 

You may want to look at using SAMBA for this
http://www.samba.org/

Maybe this page will help as well
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/SMB-HOWTO.html#toc9

 

i don't like samba share shouldn't it just work just from the internet connection

is there a way to do it without samba share (remember the printer isn't compatible with linux only the windows desktop that i'm running in virtualbox)

 

OK, what I've done before is create a shortcut to the printer to be shared and drop that into the windows shared folder (the folder that anyone on the network has access too). Once the shortcut is there you should be able to navigate from within the virtualbox (any application like word/office print options) and select this shortcut as the default printer. You may have to create a home network to enable access to the shared folder. But i have faith you will succeed. I myself have done this very thing with a printer that was connected to an xp machine and successfully printed to it from my ubuntu box, both in linux itself and in a xp virtualbox on my linux system. I might also add that the said printer I set up was not a so called "network" printer, it was just a regular one. Hope this helps. Good luck!