Seeing network printer

I'm trying to set up my grandson's Mac Book Pro to wirelessly access a Cannon printer connected to the family Airport Extreme through a USB port. I can see the printer and print to it wirelessly from his mother's Mac Book Pro. I've tried plugging the printer directly into his machine and then re-connecting it to the Airport but I still can't see it. I have printer sharing selected on both Mac Books. Any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong? I suspect I have something miss set somewhere. Both machines are running Leopard and are up to date. The only thing different is that I have him on the guest network rather than the primary network. I can't imagine however, that that would keep him from seeing the printer. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Ken

Have you tried his machine in the primary network? If it can see the printer from there, then it's the fact that you have two separate networks. I suspect that is the root cause here and you can verify that by temporarily putting him in the primary network.

I am not a genius when it comes to guest networking but that might be an issue. Try letting his machine join the primary network temporarily to see if he can print.

Another thing to check is to make sure that the printer driver is installed on his machine. I had my Canon connected to a Time Capsule while I figured out their setup for a printer with built-in networking. I think I had to attach the printer directly to the computer and install the driver by USB before it would be seen.

BTW if that printer is network capable their is an advantage to using their setup rather than directly connecting to the Airport: When I connect my Canon directly to the Time Capsule the status monitoring (ink levels etc) does not work. It does if the printer is connected using their networking setup.

Thank you for your recommendations. I've had a nagging suspicion that being on the guest network might be the issue. I'll switch over and give it a try. As to the drivers, I've plugged the printer into his machine and it comes up and I'm able to print so I don't think they're an issue at this point. Thanks again.

Under sharing in system preferences when you enabled printer sharing there are 2 columns to the right the far right column does it say all users if not I believe thats your problem.

Yes, sharing is set to all users can print. It's strange that I can see the printer from one computer but not from the other. I'll be seeing him later today and try moving him to the primary network to see it that solves the problem. You would think however, that with sharing set properly, anyone on the guest network would be able to see and print.

The other option to try would be creating a new user account instead of guest but I would have thought all users would work since anyone that comes to my house has had the ability to print from any OS with shared on. I don't run a guest account but
I did set wife up as a user she just does not have admin privileges.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions and recommendations. I switched him over from the guest to the primary network, went to add a printer and there it was. I connected and printed a test page so all is working well. Now the next thing is to get him connected to the backup disk through airport. I brought up time machine but no disk was listed when I tried to set up. On to the next challenge. Thanks again.

I'll piggyback on this thread and say I'm having the same problem. My configuration is different though so I'll give all the details:

Mac Pro, OS X Lion (two days old).

Windows 7 PC

HP C4680 Photosmart printer. This printer is physically connected to the Mac via USB and I'm able to print to it fine. It was previously connected to the PC via USB and worked fine so I know the drivers are installed and current.

Both machines are on the same network and connected to the same router.

I have file sharing enabled on both machines and am able to share files in both directions. I have both AFP and SMB checked.

I have printer sharing turned on and sharing enabled. It is set so Everyone can print.

When I try to add a network printer on the PC it does not find the printer connected to the Mac. When I try to add it manually via \\MacPro\[printer name] it's not found.

I've reset the printing system on the Mac. I've rebooted on both sides. Still no joy.

Any suggestions for other things to try?

I have a similar configuration but running XP on my PC with an Epson connected to my iMAC. I can print to the printer wirelessly from my Mac Book Pro but was never able to get it to work from the PC. I solved the problem by installing a switch (picked it up at Fry's) into which I plugged the printer cable and USB cables from the iMAC and PC. When i want to print from the PC I switch the printer to it. Otherwise I leave it switched to the iMAC. Not the most elegant solution but it works. Hope this helps

Donkey Hodie said:

I'll piggyback on this thread and say I'm having the same problem. My configuration is different though so I'll give all the details:

Mac Pro, OS X Lion (two days old).

Windows 7 PC

HP C4680 Photosmart printer. This printer is physically connected to the Mac via USB and I'm able to print to it fine. It was previously connected to the PC via USB and worked fine so I know the drivers are installed and current.

Both machines are on the same network and connected to the same router.

I have file sharing enabled on both machines and am able to share files in both directions. I have both AFP and SMB checked.

I have printer sharing turned on and sharing enabled. It is set so Everyone can print.

When I try to add a network printer on the PC it does not find the printer connected to the Mac. When I try to add it manually via \\MacPro\[printer name] it's not found.

I've reset the printing system on the Mac. I've rebooted on both sides. Still no joy.

Any suggestions for other things to try?

Click to expand...

Try disabling your AV and firewall on the PC then see if it will work then re-enable the AV and Firewall .

osxx said:

Try disabling your AV and firewall on the PC then see if it will work then re-enable the AV and Firewall .

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I did try this and, just to insure everything was reset, rebooted on both sides. No joy.

I also previously had the Windows machine set up in a workgroup. I thought that, or at least the permissions/sharing associated with it, might be a source of the problem so I turned that off as well. Still no joy.

Just to make sure the printer attached to the Mac was being exported, I did a cupsaddsmb -a, still invisible on the windows side.

I have a vague suspicion that the problem is on the Mac side but haven't been able to find anything that helps.

Further suggestions welcomed.

I'm having the same problem with Win 7 & Lion. I didn't get mine working but don't really need a printer on my mac as I can just plug in the usb cable and print. One thing I did learn was to make sure you download Bonjour from Apple because as soon as I put it on Win 7 saw the mac printer. Download it and try. Good luck. Apple - Support - Downloads

Max Power1509 said:

I'm having the same problem with Win 7 & Lion. I didn't get mine working but don't really need a printer on my mac as I can just plug in the usb cable and print. One thing I did learn was to make sure you download Bonjour from Apple because as soon as I put it on Win 7 saw the mac printer. Download it and try. Good luck. Apple - Support - Downloads

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I did download bonjour for windows and got what appears to be the standard "you don't have sufficient permissions..." error. I've looked on several hundred web pages as well as the Apple support pages and most say it's either because the print queue for the printer wasn't deleted on the Windows machine (it was, I checked) or it's an Airport Express issue (which I don't have).

Sigh.

[rant] There must be a billion PC's in the world and certainly several million Mac's. There have got to be millions of printers connected to them via networks. This should be so simple. Why is it so darned hard? I've been using computers since the 70's. I've designed and developed computer hardware and software including operating system software and yet I can't add a fricken' network printer. This is stupid [/rant]

Any other suggestions? I'm within my 14 day "send it back" period and I'm darned tempted to throw it in a box and ship it back.

Donkey Hodie said:

Thanks for the suggestion. I did download bonjour for windows and got what appears to be the standard "you don't have sufficient permissions..." error. I've looked on several hundred web pages as well as the Apple support pages and most say it's either because the print queue for the printer wasn't deleted on the Windows machine (it was, I checked) or it's an Airport Express issue (which I don't have).

Sigh.

[rant] There must be a billion PC's in the world and certainly several million Mac's. There have got to be millions of printers connected to them via networks. This should be so simple. Why is it so darned hard? I've been using computers since the 70's. I've designed and developed computer hardware and software including operating system software and yet I can't add a fricken' network printer. This is stupid [/rant]

Any other suggestions? I'm within my 14 day "send it back" period and I'm darned tempted to throw it in a box and ship it back.

Click to expand...

I got the same error when trying to share the printer on the mac to Win 7. I did everything I read and am having the same problems as you. I just thought I'd go back to it later. My main problem was the Win 7 machine started doing some error with the printer and the spooler stopped and had to go to services and start it again and again I thought that maybe the Windows machine was stuffing up and I wasn't a complete dill. If we are having the same problem then I guess a lot of people are going to face this too. I'll start looking around and I'm sure we can fix this. Don't give up mate.

Max

Max Power1509 said:

Don't give up mate.

Max

Click to expand...

No worries, I'm either dumb enough or stubborn enough that I'll keep pounding my head against it until I get it to work.

Just to save anyone reading this thread some time, when I got the "you don't have sufficient permissions" error on the Windows side of Bonjour, I went into the registry and change the permissions on Bonjour to "Everyone" and it made no difference so it is emphatically not a permissions problem with Bonjour.

To reiterate, my problem is the Windows system doesn't see the printer on the Mac at all. Sharing is turned on for both files and the printer and I'm able to access files back and forth at will.

I still suspect a configuration/permissions problem on the Mac side.

And just for completeness, here is one other thing I tried. Recall from above that the printer was previously connected via USB to the windows box. Therefore I know the drivers are installed and correct. I thought that since I'd simply unplugged it rather than removing it through the control panel that there might be spool files or some other detritus remaining so I schlepped the printer back over to the Windows system, plugged it back in and then removed it. There are no spool files (in CWindows\system32\printers\spool\...) or anything else left behind so that couldn't be the problem.

It just can't be this hard.

One thing I forgot to say was when I have the printer on the windows machine the Mac see's it no worries but asks for a username and password. So I put the Windows username in(username on the machine) and the mac shakes the box like WRONG. The PC doesn't have a password so what do you put in? If the printers in the Mac the PC see's it in Bonjour but then I get the you don't have sufficient permissions. Again like yours my MAc see's the windows network and the windows machines see the Mac. I think the problem is windows 7 because my media box on the TV plays anything from a XP machine but asks for the username and password on any Win 7 PC. I have never got it to work on Win 7. Does the same with the Mac aswell but I don't need it to work on that.

Try this. Printing to a Windows 7 Shared Printer from Macintosh OS X | 7 Tutorials

Tried that too. That was when the PC started with the spooler is turned off etc. I have another Win 7 PC and printer in the shed on the network so I'll try that and see what works or doesn't.

Max

Ok tried the printer on the network (shed one) and the same thing. Username and password. The shed PC doesn't have a password. Here's a pic.