Help with wirelessly networking a printer.

Hola,

I have a Lexmark E232 that is currently setup directly with my desktop PC. I want to add printing functionality to my Macbook wirelessly. I'm trying to figure out how to go about doing this.

The current setup:

Both the desktop PC and the Macbook are connected to the internet via a Linksys WRT54G that is upstairs. The Lexmark is connected via USB to my desktop.

Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas? Thanks in advance!

EDIT: On second thought, if anyone has any ideas as to how to be able to share files between the Desktop/Macbook that too would be a huge help. Thanks!

Sharing files is easy. Put them both on the same workgroup (pc network config or right click my computer and go to the computer name tab to set it up on a workgroup name of your choice (suggest "WORKGROUP" as this is the one you mac is setup to use) on the mac open the utilities folder, then run directory access program and go to smb settings configuration to set the workgroup name, then go into system preferences sharing and enable personal file sharing). Once you have your windows pc setup on a workgroup, share your folders thru my computer or explorer and grant everyone access. Once that is complete, you can go into finder and usually click on the top network icon and see the other computer and connect to it using the username and password you have setup on the pc - if it doesnt work setup a username and password for the folder; however, granting everyone access will usually work. You can also choose the "go" menu item in finder and select connect to server and put in smb://computernam/foldername to connect directly to it.

As for the printer. Pray. Burn incense to the gods. Enable windows printer access in the system preferences by choosing the printers and faxes icon, click the + to add a printer, select IP printer, then more printers at the bottom, then choose Windows printing and the name off the workgroup you named your windows pc earlier in the other step.Then sit back and watch if fail miserably as you try every driver in the list since OSX only includes certain drivers which never seem to work right. People say to install ghostscript for linux and all its drivers, but I never could get anything but a bunch of garbage pages to print out on my HP Photosmart with it. Seriously, I have not seen anyone on here who had a printer that OSX didn't have a built-in driver for that every was successful. Now if there is a built-in driver that will work with it, it will work by using the windows printing method I spoke of. If not, I havent a clue. I ended up getting an airport router which has its own usb port to connect a printer to and it fired right up and let me install the driver off the cd, but using the sharing method I never got the HP to work. Good luck with it and post back if it works for you as I might need to jot down your method!

Thanks very much for taking the time to type everything out!

File sharing was a success, thanks. Will other people who are connected to the net via my router have access to my files as well?

The printer looked promising. I have the right driver on my Macbook, it sees the printer via Workgroup but when I go to print a document I get a "NT_ACCESS_DENIED" error. This leads me to believe that a connection is there, I just don't have authority to print. Any thoughts?

dak125,

Did you ever find a solution?

I'm having a similar error with a Brother HL-2040. It was working fine until my IP changed (DHCP required by Comcast - supposedly). I finally managed to setup my Windows tower with a dedicated IP address (after hunting down the necessary DNS servers) and have enabled all the windows sharing options I can. Still have absolutely no ability to print from my Macbook though which is absolutely annoying.

Unfortunately I never did. To be honest, I never really put much effort into it. It's not that important to print from my Mac. If you figure something out I'd greatly appreciate any info . Good luck.

Are you sharing your printer through windows with full read/write access? Make sure the group "everyone" has full access to it.

As to a thought of an alternate method... you could always buy a print server. You can get them off of newegg.com for as little as $30. Also, if your printer has its own IP address, your windows based computer doesn't have to be turned on for you to be able to print from your Mac.