Printing to winXP shared printer - my solution

So I'm a long time windows/linux user who finally picked up a Macbook running Leopard, and after a few days tried to figure out how to set it up to print to my XP machine that has a shared printer (over a wireless network).

Of course it did not work the first, second, third, . . . , 50th time later and i was beginning to get very frustrated.

I scoured the internet looking for solutions and went through all the different smb configurations and tricks using http://localholst:631 instead of adding the printer by the general System Preferences tab - to no avail.

I had all the standard errors: "cli_connect failed", "Unable to connect to Samba host", "NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED" etc., etc.,

What follows is a solution that worked for me and allows me to print perfectly.

SETUP FOR YOUR WINDOWS XP MACHINE

0) I don't know if this works for Vista or any other flavor...

1) Windows XP internal firewall turned off

2) No other firewall (i.e. Sygate etc.,) - I may fool around with getting it to work with a firewall but for now, turn it off.

3) Go to the Control Panel->Add Remove Programs->Add remove Windows Components and check off "Other Network File and Print Services" and check off "Print Services for Unix". You will need a winXP CD to install this.

4) Next back in the control panel, go to Administrative Tools and open Services.

5) Scroll down to find the TCP/IP Print Server service, right click on this, select properties, and set "Startup type" to be Automatic. As well, make sure you start the service if it is not already started.

6) Obviously you need a printer to be shared, so to do this (after you printer is installed and works normally from your XP machine), go back to the control panel and double click Printers and Faxes. Then right click on your printer and click on "Sharing". Click the radio button for "Share this printer" and give it a name. I did not try all the various combos of letters, numbers, and symbols, so my advice is to use simple printer name like "hp3200" or something. Short and not weird...

SETUP FOR YOUR MACBOOK RUNNING LEOPARD

1) Go here: http://homepage.mac.com/william_white/print_to_windows.html
and follow Mr. White's instructions regarding replacing the smbspool file (halfway down at the paragraph beginning with "This can be fixed...").

2) Continue to follow his instructions regarding linking your new (actually older) version of smbspool with the CUPS backend:
http://homepage.mac.com/william_white/print_to_windows.html#_1._Link_the

NOTE: No offense to Mr. White but I never followed any of his instructions after this last step. I'm sure it is helpful and was meant to work for 10.2 but after I finished step one, I carried on in a different direction.

3) If you have a printer currently installed, blow it away in your system preferences.

4) go to http://localhost:631 (which is the CUPS config) to add the new printer

5) Click the Add Printer link and add a human readable name, location, and description, then click continue

6) Here's where I differ from 95% of the help I found online - instead of choosing "Windows Printer for Samba" from the next menu, choose "LPD/LPR Host or Printer" then continue

7) for the device URI enter: lpd://<ip address of your xp machine>/<printer name> then click continue

8) next pick your printer type and select the gutenprint driver if available

Once this printer has been added, try printing a test page -it should work! This worked for me no problem, hope it helps...

recently, I got my very first Mac OS macbook, no idea at all how to configure it to work with my windows home network. well, after a day of trying, finally, got it linked with my other PCs. however, still can't use the shared printer on the network, which is connected to a Vista PC.

the printer is for sure shared and works perfectly among all my other 4 PCs, but I can't even see it for the printer popup dialogue box on the leopard. I've googled around, and there are just no straght forward answer to this issue, not even from the Mac support website.

why people say Mac makes things simple, I don't get it. on the Leopard, everytime I turn on the computer, I have to manually Go>connect to server, login so that I can view my shared pcs. however, on all my pcs, after turn on the computer, click Network, and all my shared computers are shown, including my Mac. just click and go, no login required. ... weired. after I used the Mac for a week, the only thing I would like about Mac, it's its design, nothing else, at least, is not for people who have reasonable PC skills like me, when you try to get something done on a Mac, it's just not that user-friendly for Mac, and the supports from Internet is just too little ...

well, I guest Apple is just for computer dummies who doesn't need to know much about computer, but just application users. I haven't tried programming with Mac yet, don't know what I would encounter then.

Thats sounds good.

I bought a cheap Canon printer the other week to connect to my dads windows PC thinking that I would be able to connect to it via my Mac Book but I just couldn't get it working at all. even though Mac drivers are available.

I'll try this fix, thanks.

perhaps its you who's the dummy, my macs can see my pc's without doing anything.

Ricky55 said:

perhaps its you who's the dummy, my macs can see my pc's without doing anything.

Click to expand...

really? excuse me, please let me know how, I'm so new to the Mac world

it's simple, leopard print to a vista shared printer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

hey guys, to everyone who struggling printing to a vista shared printer from your leopard, here is a link after a serious digging out.

http://rareexample.ca/2008/03/26/pri...vista-printer/

thanks to the anonymous contributor. anyway, this is the best 100% working method.

but one thing I did learn today, a network printer is different to a shared printer. **** this, if you google, google for a vista shared printer. then you're half way done. (a network printer refers to a printer has its own IP, and can be hooked up with a wired/wireless router regardless what machine you're using on your network, correct me if I'm wrong)

cheers, mate, you will be appriciated the method list in the link, works just in 3 minutes.

at last. got it figured out. hooray!!!!!!!!!!!