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Network Printing on MicroShaft

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Dr. Slack

Mon Feb 20 2006, 08:53AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

I know there are some knowledgable people on the dark side about, can anybody help me with a solution or where to poke for more information.

I have three XP machines, all SP2. A P3 desktop running AVG and zone alarm with a Samsung 1520 laser, a Sempron desktop running that free German virus checker with the red/blue umbrella icon, and a Dell laptop with McAffee with a Dell922 printer. My ADSL router is a Dlink604, 802.11g, with a radio dongle in the laptop, running WPA encryption. Both printers appear to work fine on their respective machines.

I am somwhat confused about how to run the network connection wizard. It appears that you only need to make a floppy if you need to run it on a non-XP machine, so presumably the floppy is not carrying permissions between machines, and if it was, the order of running the wizard would be significant. Having run it, it says "you have successfully set up file and printer sharing...". I *can* move files into and out of every shared drive on the network, and browse the net from each machine, so a heck of a lot is working. But not the printers. Except for one time when I was not certain what I did (actually I think I only had the two desktops on the netowrk at that time) and was able to print on the 1520 from the Semporn, I can't see the printers. They don't appear in explorer, they don't appear in the list when I try to "Add Networked Printer" in the printer dialogs. Except sometimes (rarely) I can see the dell922 from the sempron, and then I am told I don't have permission to connect to it (I am using admin on all machines). I do have a workaround, moving the print file via the shared directories, but I'd rather print sharing did what it said on the tin.

Rather than being told to run Network Connection Wizard again, which is all the help Microsop offer (I am getting tired of runnign the same program from the same state and getting essentially the same null result) how do I find out what is visible, permissible, shared, and set it explicitly?

Steve Conner

Mon Feb 20 2006, 02:01PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Just do what I did:

*Run the same program dozens of times with no effect
*Lose your temper and bash the laptop with your fist causing the hard drive to break
*Discover the problem was caused by a bad CMOS battery and feel like a complete idiot not to mention having lost any files that were on the drive and being $100 in the hole for a new drive

What you have permission to access on XP may depend on the user name and password you log in with. Also, for successful print sharing, the printer drivers need to be installed on every machine in the network that wants to use the printer. XP is supposed to do this automatically but sometimes it doesn't.

I find that if you open an explorer window and type \\666.666.666.666 in the address bar and press return (where 666.etc is the IP address fo the machine you want to examine) it usually shows you any shared resources. You can also open a windows command prompt and type "net view foo" (where foo is the name of the machine you want to interrogate) to see a list of shared resources.

Finally: I have never got the Network Connection Wizard to do anything useful ever. Nor do I know anyone else who has got it to do anything.

Bjørn

Mon Feb 20 2006, 02:48PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

I have gotten the Network Connection Wizard to do things, but I don't know what it did or if it did what it was supposed to.

The correct method is to use the NET xxxx command on the commandline. Then you can be sure that the things you want to be done will be done and you can find out what has been done. The backside is that the documentation has to be read and other nonsense.

...

Mon Feb 20 2006, 04:50PM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

That network wizard does work, so long as you know how to use it. Basically, all you need to do is share the printer (they do not share automatically) by right clicking on it and selecting share. It should them appear when you type the name of the computer into explorer, its ip address into explorer, or navigate to it through network neighborhood. Then on the remote computer you double click on the picture of the printer and click yes to the prompt that installing the driver to your printer will infect your computer with a virus, and print to it like you would a local computer.

Things to note:
The computers must be in the same domain or workgroup (whichever you are using)
They must have printer and file sharing enabled (they can be selected separately by right clicking on the icon for your ethernet adapter, clicking properties, and selecting file and printer sharing in the list of options, click properties, and make sure they are both selected.

Carbon_Rod

Tue Feb 21 2006, 12:21AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

I am not quite sure if you are using NT or RAW format for your cue. Zone alarm may be doing something silly too with its content filtering options and protection scheme (enforces rules even if GUI is shutdown etc.)

AVG has its own set of issues, but to my knowledge does not interfere with windows network protocols. Perhaps the â€œSecurity Checkâ€ option for network configuration is automatically turning off the services.

Note NT/XP for some services cannot have OS clones on the same network due to unique cryptographic PIDs of every install. Also note that differing versions of Windows may run into issues with file and print sharing options.

Since I use a Linux based fax/print server I found there are programs (Win32/64 MacOS Linux) that route documents from the printer driver directly over the VPN private network. I think NT and XP are both support RAW spool mode in addition to NT mode out of the box too.

Scan your clients and SAMBA shares from windows (beware some of the utilities here may be flagged by some virus scanners as malware.):
Shed

Cheers,

Liam

Tue Feb 21 2006, 02:52AM

Registered Member #113 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 01:40AM
Location:
Posts: 49

Network anything wizard is probably a bad idea. I say this because oftentimes, such as with the network connection wizard, when you hit things like "My computer connects though a network," the network could be designed a bajillion different ways and Windows basically guesses which one it is. Note, however, that it probably doesn't matter, and that network connection wizard is useless unless you have dialup.

There is nothing really confusing about the network wizard, really. Just make sure you get the names right. The fact that they can communicate for file sharing says quite a bit. Can you print over the network once in a while? Could you at one point? Is "print sharing" enabled in network settings?

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