[liamis2cool]

Hey, i have a question where i bought a laptop which use in my room it has wireless capabilities, now i bought the router which is installed in my brothers room connected straight from his pc, his PC doesnt have any wireless capabilites although he uses a bluetooth dongle always attatched. right my question is his pc has the printer connected to it, is there a way i can use his printer without using any wires or buying one of those Print Adapters as there round £40 and the printer prob cost round that to begin with is there a way i can set up my laptop to do such a command

Laptop>Router>pc>printer

or my laptop has built in bluetooth can i use this to connect his bluetooth dongle and print that way.

laptop bluetooth>pc bluetooth> printer

let me know any solutions.

i believe there has to be somewhere i have an xbox 360 which doesnt have the wireless adapter this is wired in to the router and i can stream any content off my laptop onto my xbox 360.

 

[erick295]

Anything connected to the router can communicate with anything else that's connected, whether it's wireless or not, but since this printer isn't connected directly to the router, you need to share it through the desktop.

Go into the computer's network control panel, then go to the LAN connection properties and enable file and print sharing on the desktop. After that, right click on the printer and share it (pretty self-explanatory when you do it), then look for it on your laptop by browsing the network for it or adding a printer and searching for it that way. Look for his desktop by looking for its computer name (set in the System control panel on the desktop), and the printer will be lister under it. You may have to install the print driver from the printer's CD. Depending on what kind of printer it is, the software may actually be able to find it on the network automatically and set it up as a network printer for you.

 

[liamis2cool]

awesome much obliged, will try when i get in from work, and post the outcome.

 

[liamis2cool]

sorry but that doesnt really make sense to me, can you do it step by step a little bit clearer for me, really sorry bout this.!

 

[erick295]

See if this helps:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/honeycutt_july2.mspx

 

[liamis2cool]

at the minute i have labelled the printer, and labelled each workgroup but i am having diffuculty networking the 2 pc's i know how to discover the printer after that, but having trouble linking it all together at the minute

 

[erick295]

For the time being, disable all firewalls on both machines, and see if that helps.

What exact problem are you having?

 

[liamis2cool]

i have firewalls diabled on both machines, at the minute on my laptop i have set the workgroup name and on the pc i have also set it to the same one, then i have also got the printer ready for sharing. but i cannot see either machine within the workgroup view in my network places.

 

[erick295]

Make sure you have File and Print sharing enabled the connection properties on the desktop. In the Network Connections Control Panel, right click on Local Area Network (or Wireless if that's how the computer is connected to the router) and go to Properties. Also restart both machines if you haven't already. Both of these are XP, right?

 

[liamis2cool]

i have done that for both computers, whats next step

 

[erick295]

You should probably either post this question in the networking forum or ask for this thread to be moved there... more people would know. If what I'm telling you doesn't work, I don't know what else you could try.

 

[BratDawg]

When you are on your brother's computer and looking at the printers (start, printers) - is the printer you want to use shared? It will have a hand under it if it is. If it is not, you need to share it.

Once you enable file & printer sharing - as you did - you have to actually share whatever folders, documents, peripherals on the comptuer they are directly connected to before they are visible on the network.

Once you have shared the printer from the computer that's connected to it, it should show up in the list of resources for that computer on the network. From your machine, you should be able to show network connections, view workgroup computers, pick your work group, find your brother's computer, and see that printer. Alternately, when you click to add a printer on your machine and choose network and browse your network, you should see it.

The only other problem I see is that if your brother's machine is anything other than a windows xp system, you may end up with a problem of drivers. Some printers don't do so good on networks with mixed operating systems - at least the older ones. This is because when you add a printer that is connected to someone else's machine, you are essentially pulling a copy of the drivers from that machine to yours, and if yours is a totally different os.... it may present a problem.

Hope this helps.