Its Amazing! Printer Sharing with Bonjour!

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I have an Epson Sylus R800 connected to my Mac. On the same home network, I have my work laptop, running Windows XP. I would like to print from the Windows PC to the Epson printer through the network. Sound easy? No way! I turned myself inside out trying to share the printer on the Mac with the PC using the usual Samba mechanisms. No joy. Windows steadfastly refused to recognize that there was a printer there on my Mac.

Then I stumbled across a web page on Apple.com that talked about using Bonjour to do this and thought "what have I got to lose?" and tried it out. I downloaded Bonjour for Windows, ran the very simple installer and all seemed to go well. The I opened my Windows Printers and Faxes dialog and selected Add a Printer. Boom! There is was, no muss, no fuss. My Apple based printer simply showed up, ready for selection. I was amazed! ...or "gobsmacked" as they say in the UK. Anyway, this Bonjour stuff is really neat. It truly is zero configuration networking.

OK, here are the details for those who may wish to try this themselves. The objective is to allow your Windows PC to print using a printer connected to your Mac, which is on the same network as your Mac.

1/ On the Mac, I opened System Preferences, went to Print and Fax and enabled sharing on my printer.

2/ On the Mac, I went to System Preferences, Sharing, and disabled my firewall (this step may not be needed, but I was being sure firewalling issues didn't get in the way).

3/ On my PC, I went into the corporate firewall software and added my Mac's local IP address (192.168.1.2) to the "friends" list, so that the firewall would not block communications to the Mac.

4/ On my PC, I downloaded Bonjour for Windows (get this from the Apple site at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjourforwindows.html, and ran the installer. Living truly dangerously, I didn't even restart the PC after I installed.

5/ On the Mac, I turned on my printer - VERY important. This won't work if the printer isn't on apparently.

6/ On the PC, I ran the Bonjour Printer Wizard. A shortcut to it was placed on the desktop by the Bonjour for Windows installer. A window opened immediately and there was my printer, happily listed out and ready for use. I OK'd the preselected driver type (generic/postscript), and that was that. A few Windows progress meters popped up and disappeared as Windows installed the printer driver and then I was done.

7/ On the PC, I went to the Start Menu, selected Printers and Fax and as I mentioned above, there was my printer, ready for use.

8/ With fear and trepidation, I attempted to print a small Word document. Boom! It printed right away.

Apple makes things SO easy!!! I hope that this may make printer sharing easy for you too.
 
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I would love it if this worked the other way around. I can't seem to get my Macbook to find the shared printer connected to my PC.

I tried everything short of the Ghostscript trick, which is a ridiculously hard way to install a printer. I would much rather prefer to use my USB drive. :eek:
 
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Absolutely brilliant info mac57, but your linky has an ) at the end which needs taking off ...
 
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Done! Thanks for pointing that out Pulse-8.

It is a few hours later and I am *still* giddy that this worked so easily. Admitedly I am an engineer, and good technology that works well really does it for me. But, quite aside from that, as a longtime Windows and then Linux user, I can't tell you how many hours (maybe days) I have wasted trying to get networked devices to work together. It is *always* a painful and difficult undertaking.

To be able to install the software and have it just work is nothing short of amazing. This is what networking should be like. It is another one of those transcending moments when it is once more crystal clear that Apple really is as good as all the hype - it really is better!

What can I say except - WELL DONE APPLE!
 
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Well done mac57~! I have been trying to do this very thing the past week and although I had achieved it before I'd forgotten exactly how but your walk-through worked perfectly!

I just had to set the newly installed printer as the default (I had one already installed from my failed attempt to print to my Macs printer) and then I was ready to rock'n'roll!

Thanks again for a timely thread!
 
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I am so glad that is has worked out well Pulse-8.

BTW, it turns out that Step 2 above *is* needed (I indicated above that I wasn't sure if it was needed). When I tried re-enabling my Mac Firewall, printing stopped working. I am not sure what ports Bonjour printer sharing uses, but I will need to research that next. Meantime, for the short duration while I am printing, I just turn off the firewall.
 
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Cant wait to try this out.
I have the same/similar problem. I have an Epson R300 connected to my iMac which is fine. I would also like to be able to print from my XP machine which is connected via a Netgear wireless router, and boy have I had problems.
I can see the printer within XP, and it shows it as networked, but when I try to print, I get the message that the printer is Idle.......never a truer word said.....bone idle.......the lazy thing just wont print from XP, so I will try the above and hope it works.

Cheers

Philip
 
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...Living truly dangerously, I didn't even restart the PC after I installed.

God I love living on the edge like that!
 
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[potential sarcasm noted! :dive: ]

Yeah, I really didn't expect it to work, so I figured what the heck...

It seems like no matter what, when you install new software on a PC, you HAVE to restart to get it to work properly.

So, I thought it would be a real torture test for Apple Bonjour to not even restart... and it STILL worked!!

...Apple is good!!
 
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BTW, it turns out that Step 2 above *is* needed (I indicated above that I wasn't sure if it was needed). When I tried re-enabling my Mac Firewall, printing stopped working. I am not sure what ports Bonjour printer sharing uses, but I will need to research that next. Meantime, for the short duration while I am printing, I just turn off the firewall.

Just thought I'd mention that my Firewall is on and when I successfully shared my Mac connected printer with my PC, the iMacs Firewall being on wasn't an issue.
 
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I have a question for you folks.
Try doing it reverse// Say Printer attached to Windows PC running Vista and mackbook to print wirelessly to the printer. I have a 2 pc running vista & the mac book whish is all networked and can see each other and sharing files. Its just the printer I cannot see on the mac. its day 3 now still no luck.


Vista Ultimate
PC Core 2 duo 2.87
6gb

Mac Book Core 2 duo
2.4ghz
4gb
Mac OS X.5.6
 

cwa107


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I have a question for you folks.
Try doing it reverse// Say Printer attached to Windows PC running Vista and mackbook to print wirelessly to the printer. I have a 2 pc running vista & the mac book whish is all networked and can see each other and sharing files. Its just the printer I cannot see on the mac. its day 3 now still no luck.


Vista Ultimate
PC Core 2 duo 2.87
6gb

Mac Book Core 2 duo
2.4ghz
4gb
Mac OS X.5.6

Did you install the Mac version of the printer driver on your MacBook?
 
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nmjeria,

take a look at this thread in the switcher hangout - i've given 2 links to some solutions - the long winded second method worked for me

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/switcher-hangout/169159-printer-sharing-pc-macbook.html

Next time - i'll get a separate scanner, then can use the printer using Bonjour thru my Time Capsule which works great and is as astonishing as the OP above in 2007 says.. only more so perhaps, now it's 2009. I also was stunned... nay, flabbergasted, when it all just worked with the Time capsule, Bonjour software and a macbook, a pc laptop and the pc desktop.... (had to go back to using printer directly thru PC desktop due to occasional scanner use, not possible over wireless network)


Coops
 

cwa107


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(had to go back to using printer directly thru PC desktop due to occasional scanner use, not possible over wireless network)


Coops


Actually, it is... you just need the right device. Check out this one:

US-4A - USB Device Server, 4-Port Keyspan by Tripp Lite

The difference is that instead of using IPP or LPD, this device actually convinces the host that the device is attached via USB directly. So, just about any USB device can be shared over the network. I have one of these and it works great.
 

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