Shared Printer Problems

Ok, this has been giving me the biggest headache for the past month and any help would be MUCH appreciated as I now have hit a dead end.

I have a home network set up with one computer serving as the Server for the house, it is running Vista Ultimate x64. All the printers are connected to that computer and are shared. The server also contains all of our movies and music for the house. I have several computers connected to it ranging from Vista Home Premium x86 to Vista Ultimate x64. Now for some reason I am only able to print to the printer when I am logged in on an account with the exact name and password as the one that I made on the server. Any other account I just get an error in the printer queue. So I figured I just needed to set up everyone with a user name and password on the server. I did that and the same thing is happening. I've checked the security tab on the printer and set Everyone to have full control over the printer. Printer sharing is enabled on the server and I'm adding the printer to the other computers via local port "\\SERVER\Colour Laser\". So I have no idea what else it could be. I'm also installing both x86 and x64 drivers on the server and the proper ones on the client computers.

So to recap. I have:

Server - Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Printer 1 - HP Laser CP1215
Printer 2 - HP Deskjet 5550
Computer 1 - Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Computer 2 - Windows Vista Ultimate x86
Computer 3 - Windows Vista Home Premium x86
Computer 4 - Windows Vista Home Premium x86

Each computer has one common user name and password, "Tyler", I can successfully print from any computer while on that account. However I am unsuccessful in printing from any other account. Any help is much appreciated as I am about to lose some hair over this.

Well I have my printers connected to a Dell XPS running Vista 64 Home Premium. The other house computers are XP based desktops and mobiles.

Interesting enough, the file sharing works fine and printing to my Canon printer works fine. Sharing to the HP does not work (it works locally).

This has to be some simple setup (along with something HP did to mess up the driver).

I have seen the reverse -- printer on XP, laptop running VIsta....

Hi redone,

Due to the way that Windows Peer to Peer networking works you have to have the equivalent users on the server for each user on the clients.

basically you give the local user on the server the usage rights you want to and then when the equivalent client user attaches to the sever these rights are transferred to the client user

The only other way you could try is to share the printers giving the user "everyone" full control on the printer

Hope this helps

THanks Nigal -- that does not help my issue

barman58 said:

The only other way you could try is to share the printers giving the user "everyone" full control on the printer

Hope this helps

Click to expand...

I went under the security tab in the printer and set 'Everyone' to have full control. I also added another user to the server and added a new user to the other computer with the same name and couldn't print on that either.