[HELP] Printer Sharing Problems

I am having a problem printing on a home network. The printer (Epson Stylus C66) is connected by USB to a desktop and is also installed as a shared printer on another desktop (connected through a wireless card). The network is set up and running properly - the second desktop can connect to the internet via the "main" desktop and file sharing between the two PCs operates normally. The printer can be seen on both PCs - on the main desktop it is set up to share while on the second desktop it shows as an installed printer. When I send a print job from the second desktop to the "main" desktop it appears in the print queue on the "main" desktop with status as “printing” and owner as “guest” but the job never starts to print. OS is Windows XP Professional, SP2.

I have tried the following:-
(1) Reinstalling printer on both machines.
(2) Installing latest Epson driver.
(3) Setting printer to print direct rather than spooling.
(4) Checking that print spooling service is started and set to automatic at startup.

None of the above has made any difference - can anyone help please?

 

Firewall software would be the first place, along with making sure the proper services are started in Services.msc (namely Spooler service).

 

ok thanks for the reply, i had already checked the firewall software which is just the standard windows firewall and it is all unblocked in that.

what is this about services.msc and printer spool, what should this be set as?

also can you make the printer available to print even when the attached desktop is switched off or does the connected desktop have to be switched on for you to print? if you can have the desktop switched off could you please tell me how to set this up?

thanks in advance,

jamie

 

Services.msc has all the services for XP in it, and acts like a management tool for them. As for Print Spool Service, it should be set as 'Started' and Automatic.

 

yes, that is set like that on both systems.

any other suggestions? is it to do with permissions maybe?

thanks

 

Great site to help with determining what is going wrong http://www.ezlan.net/