Vista - How does printer sharing really work?

I have successfully networked my Vista Home Premium 64bit Dell laptop to my WinXP Pro PC and am able to transfer files back and forth.

Now I'm trying to set up a HP 3390 USB printer that's attached to the WinXP Pro PC as a network printer, and print to it from the Vista laptop. When I try to setup the printer for networking, it seems that Vista wants a 64bit printer driver for it. Is that how network printers work?

IOW, do all USB peripherals like printers, scanners and memory card readers have to have Vista 64bit drivers to work with a networked Vista 64bit PC even though they are connected to a WinXP PC?

This is not really a problem since HP does provide a 64bit Vista driver for the 3390 laser printer and also for my HP D5360 inkjet printer. But I just wanted verification of the above before I continue trying to get the printer working as a networked printer.

Thanks,
Skyzoomer

This may be the type of explanation you're looking for:

http://elibrary.fultus.com/technical...g-network.html

Hi H2S04,
Thanks for the help but that link is not quite what I'm looking for.

QUESTIONS FOR ANYONE:
Assume a printer is already connected via USB to a desktop PC and works fine as a local printer. A router is used to network a laptop PC to the workgroup. Also assume printing from Notepad on the laptop.

When Notepad is told to print, does it require that a print driver for the printer be installed "on the laptop"? If so, then I assume that data sent via the network to the desktop PC is already in print ready format for the printer.

Continuing, once the print data arrives in the desktop PC, does the data go straight to the USB port to the printer? IOW the print driver installed in the desktop PC is never used?

Thanks.

Both the print "client" and "server" need drivers for the printer. Data sent to the server is rendered on the client, if that's a Vista or Win2K8 machine with default settings, but the driver on the print "server" is still required to interface with the printer.

No, the data arrives at the server in a rendered format (unless you disable Vista's "client-side rendering" [CSR]), but the driver on the server is still required to talk to the printer.

In this type of configuration, you don't really have a "print server" in the strictest academic definition, but instead the partial segreggation of the printing task into two halves separated by an SMB network link. That's described by the overview that I earlier linked to earlier.

Thanks for the additional clarification. I guess there's no way I'll be able to print on the printer attached to my desktop PC from my Vista Home Premium 64 laptop. None of the HP Vista 64 bit drivers that I downloaded from the HP website will install on my Vista laptop.

Guess I'll have to save MS Office documents and Photoshop photos to files on the laptop. Then open the appropriate program on the WinXP desktop, transfer the file via the network into the program and then print the file.

Thanks a lot for your help,
Skyzoomer

You should be able to print, as long as HP provides the right drivers for that printer.

What model is the printer?

When you say the drivers you downloaded fail to install, can you elaborate on that? Do you see error messages during the install process?

>> What model is the printer? <<
Printer Model is: HP Laserjet 3390 All-In-One


>> When you say the drivers you downloaded fail to install, can you elaborate on that? Do you see error messages during the install process? <<

- In Vista on the laptop, I click Start > Network and see the desktop PC.
- I click on that name and I see the shared folders and the two shared printers which are 1) Laserjet 3390 and 2) Inkjet D5360. I'm just trying to connect to the 3390 so far.
- I right click the Laserjet 3390 icon and then click "Connect" in the sub menu.
- A popup says to load the driver for the printer and wants a .inf file. I navigate to the unzipped Vista 64 bit driver that I downloaded from the HP web site and it contains several .inf files. I click OK and Vista says an appropriate driver cannot be found.

Dead in the water at this point.

Finally got the 3390 printer working as a network printer from my Vista laptop. See this thread for details (my post is on page 2):

Printer Sharing between xp and Vista

Thanks H2S04 for your help and thanks too to Kerry Brown and mgsb for their posts in the other thread.

Best regards,
Skyzoomer