I must be an idiot.

I have a question that has an easy answer, I'm sure.

Our apartment's network runs three desktops (XP), and two laptops (one XP, one OSX10.4), all connected wirelessly. I have a printer shared, connected to one of the windows desktop computers. I can print from any of the windows machines, but the mac laptop is giving me problems.

I connect to the home network using Airport, and can use the internet and everything. I added the printer in the panel using what I assumed to be the most intuitive way of doing it. I just added them from the windows network option and the computer with the printer attached popped up, so I double clicked on it and the printer connected. It seems to be recognized.

When I go to print from it, it gives me a SAMBA error. I did some research online and tried to remedy it using a method that added the printer via SAMBA. There was some sort of command line that I was supposed to enter, like smb\XXXXXXX/XXXXXX/XXXXXX/XXXXXX with the user name, the password, the share name, and the domain name or something. Is it really this complicated? Do I have to mess with this SAMBA stuff?

I was also looking and saw on Cnet that I should go into the Sys.Preferences, Network... http://www.cnet.com.au/wireless/0,239028844,240056544,00.htm#4 <p>

Step three says that I need to prepare the mac for windows networking. They gave me the impression that since I was only connecting to the router and not the windows machines that perhaps it has nothing to do with SAMBA, but the mac laptop being ill-prepared to use a shared printer on a windows network. I hadn't messed with the networking options at all, and only connected to the router. I never thought it would be this hard to print from a mac laptop. Any ideas?

I have a question that has an easy answer, I'm sure.

Our apartment's network runs three desktops (XP), and two laptops (one XP, one OSX10.4), all connected wirelessly. I have a printer shared, connected to one of the windows desktop computers. I can print from any of the windows machines, but the mac laptop is giving me problems.

I connect to the home network using Airport, and can use the internet and everything. I added the printer in the panel using what I assumed to be the most intuitive way of doing it. I just added them from the windows network option and the computer with the printer attached popped up, so I double clicked on it and the printer connected. It seems to be recognized.

When I go to print from it, it gives me a SAMBA error. I did some research online and tried to remedy it using a method that added the printer via SAMBA. There was some sort of command line that I was supposed to enter, like smb\XXXXXXX/XXXXXX/XXXXXX/XXXXXX with the user name, the password, the share name, and the domain name or something. Is it really this complicated? Do I have to mess with this SAMBA stuff?

I was also looking and saw on Cnet that I should go into the Sys.Preferences, Network... http://www.cnet.com.au/wireless/0,23...56544,00.htm#4 <p>

Step three says that I need to prepare the mac for windows networking. They gave me the impression that since I was only connecting to the router and not the windows machines that perhaps it has nothing to do with SAMBA, but the mac laptop being ill-prepared to use a shared printer on a windows network. I hadn't messed with the networking options at all, and only connected to the router. I never thought it would be this hard to print from a mac laptop. Any ideas?

I think you might of stored the username/password in iChain, which could be causing problems.

I would do the following, create a dedicated new user. Apply the user manually to the share. Then start the process you were trying. I for the life of me could not write from my MB to my PC (vista32) share until I did this...also cured my remote printer thing at the same time.

One thing to bear in mind is...dont save or store any settings until everything is working