Help! My printer ate my lunch!

Hello everyone,

I just got a MacBook Pro and I am having some trouble with my Kodak 5500 Easy-Share printer. I am trying to print from the MacBook (OSX 10.5) to my windows desktop (XP Pro-64bit). Through many failed attempts trying various approaches I read on other forums, I am finally posting this. Things I've tried include going through the advanced tab on the printer setup and selecting the windows printer option and typing the url like smb://userName:ip/printerName. I've tried the IP printing by trying to open ports for printing using various protocols and using myPublicIPort and things. The windows printing option lets me see my kodak printer on my windows machine, but it still dosen't work. Most of the time the mac printer dialog says the printer is not responding or offline (something to that effect) sometimes it says it is busy and will retry in ## seconds. Other times my windows machine brings up it's printer dialog automatically, and then displays an error. I can plug the printer directly into the MacBook and it works fine. I have fought with this silly thing for many hours, and I have no idea how to fix this.

On a funny note, I have set up file sharing and remote desktop, so I can log-in to my windows machine and get a file from the shared folder that i put into it, bring it up, and print it just fine. This seems like way to much work though, I can't understand why it is so hard to set this up.

If anyone has this problem, please let me know how you fixed it. I would greatly appreciate it.


Thank You,
dtopdawgie
(Mark)

Update

Hello again,

Just an update. After I posted my problem I did some more fiddling around and I can now get it to bring up my printers dialog on my windows machine all the time, but it has an error on the printing. I am using the advanced printer setup on the Windows Printing with the url smb://privateIpOfWindowsMachine/printerName. It appears no matter what driver I use it causes the error when printing. Has anyone found the correct drivers for this? I've tried using the gutenprint 5.0.1.98.1 driver as well as the generic postScript driver and the other two kodak drivers that came on the mac. I've also tried downloading drivers from kodak, but nothing new seems to show up in the driver list. Am I just a mac noob not doing something right on the new driver install?...

Thank You,
dtopdawgie
(Mark)

Welcome to Mac-Forums, dtopdawgie.

Is this the driver version you're using?

Yes, I downloaded the 10.5 version and installed it (i think). It showed this .pkg icon and I double clicked it. It then said instalation complete. However, I still only see the generic 5000 series kodak driver to pick from. Did I do something wrong or is this correct? Thank you for the reply.

-dtopdawgie
(Mark)

I'm not certain if Leopard has a different Printer Setup than Tiger has (I'm still on Tiger) but if it is the same, you should go to the System Preferences -> Print & Fax pref pane.

Select the printer from the list and click on the - (minus) button at the bottom to take it out of the list. Then click on the + button and select the new driver you just installed. (See screenie below)

Let us know if this fixes it. Good luck!

woah...

wow, ok. Since the holidays I just got around to having another go around with the printer issue. I found this tutorial http://iharder.sourceforge.net/current/macosx/winmacprinter/#step2

EXCELLENT! I should bake whoever made this some cookies, haha. There may be a shorter way, but I don't care because this worked just fine! Hope this helps anyone else who has a problem. Thanks for the replies too.

Respectfully,
Mark