Print sharing problem on home network

Basically the problem is that the printer will not print from either laptop that are recently added to the network.

Heres the setup:
1 Tower (XP Home)
-->F2210 HP All in one printer
1 Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit)
1 Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit)
Netgear Wireless Router
-->Tower is hardwared through router.
-->both laptops are wirelessly connected to router
-->router is hardwired to internet via dsl modem.

I have found a simular problem here.

I will look into trying a few things that seem common there such as the workgroup vs homegroup.


Heres what I know now:

-->I can see and communicate from the XP tower to the Win 7 Home Premium laptops. I just can not go the other way. I can use the remote management snap in on XP to login and change things from XP tower.

-->The windows 7 computers cant communicate back with the XP tower. Returns "invalid object" when trying to connect back to XP tower.

-->I get the login prompt for credentials when attempting to use the remote management snapin to connect the windows 7 to the XP, but it returns the above error.

-->I am rather confused, and am sure it is really a simple answer that I am too close to the issue to see.


Any help would be appreciated. If I do not post back results right away, it is because I work with the computers in questions on fridays only. I will try to keep this thread up to date and respond regularlly even if I cant test answers.

 

Since this has been sitting for so long I'm going to give you the quick version of how I would set up this network. It is by no means the only way to do it, it's just my preference from setting up office networks.

The Win7 machines can't be in homegroups, as stated in the post you linked to. Name a workgroup and have all computers in that workgroup.

Assign all 3 computers a static ip. If your current scheme is 192.168.1.XXX or something very close to that (192.168.0.XXX, 192.168.2.XXX etc), I highly recommend moving to a less common number like 192.168.48.XXX or something else obscure. You will need to change the LAN setting on your router to be in the same range. Using the most common setting as an example, the router would be 192.168.1.1 and in this recommendation you would change it to 192.168.48.1). Set the computers to a static IP of, say, 192.168.48.111 , 192.168.48.112 , 192.168.48.123 with the XP being the first computer, .111 . The rest of the settings are subnet mask-255.255.255.0 gateway-192.168.48.1 DNS server-192.168.48.1

After all machines are set and connected to the router again, on a win7 machine go to Start > Run and type in \\192.168.48.111 (press ok). The shared printer (you did share the printer on the XP machine, right?) should show up in the window that opens.

 

The static IP addresses have not been tried yet. I will have to do a bit of configuring and try that.

I followed the instructions here From the Microsoft website for networking the different versions of windows with file and print sharing.

I have file sharing after opening up some ports in the firewall but still no joy yet with the printing.:confused I followed that tutorial completely.

I am having trouble getting the windows XP tower to respond back to the windows 7 home premium 64 bit laptop, but the windows 7 laptop can respond just fine to the XP tower. :confused

I haven't begun working on the other yet as I am trying to get the one working first then will do the other.

The tower is currently 192.168.1.7
The first laptop is currently 192.168.1.3
The second laptop I haven't checked yet.

These IPs have stayed the same for the last month, so even though they are not static, they have remained the same.

I am positive it is something simple that I am missing and I am gonna feel like an idiot for missing it. I just can seem to find what I overlooked going over this a dozen times.

 

I"m still working on the new networking features of Windows7. What I have learned is that if you apply all of those years of XP experience and logic to it -- not going to work. It sounds like you have all of the settings right and the static ip's are not likely to help.

There is one very good site that I have bookmarked but it must be on my computer at work. I'll look it up in the morning. I've found MS sites to be not very helpful with these issues. Maybe they are heavy on theory and light on real world implementation because I've come across a few that haven't worked and that seems odd.

 

I would appreciate it if you could provide the link.

I agree Microsoft can leave something to be desired in only giving barebones instructions and leaving you to figure it out. Fortunately, Microsoft is not the only site to find answers to their quizzical answers. We have communities like this to get a real solution to the problems.

 

Here is a link to try finally. It's basically the same printer sharing setup as you have already done a dozen times so skip down to #6 http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2006/01/enable-file-and-printer-sharing-on-xp-sp2/

The trick suggested is to Uncheck Use simple file sharing.
(the link includes pictures)

6. . . . in the “Network Connections” Folder click on the tools menu, and select “Folder Options…”
7. Go to the view tab. Scroll down and make sure “Use simple file sharing” is unchecked.