How To Share A Printer In Windows
Many
offices have only one printer that must be used by multiple individuals. In order to facilitate this, it is sometimes
necessary to setup a peer-to-peer printer sharing connection. This means that the computer to which the printer
is connected is turned into a “server” basically, acting as the component
that receives the print requests from other computers and then sends those
requests to the connected printer one at a time. In order for anyone else to be able to print
to the printer, the computer to which it is attached must be powered on and
must be at the login prompt. Canceling
past the login prompt effectively turns off the sharing until the machine
is restarted. To setup a printer share,
use the following steps as a guide.
Windows
XP (You must be an administrator)
Find
the Computer Name
1.
Click Start, right mouse click
on My Computer
2.
Left mouse click on Properties
3.
Click on the Computer Name Tab
4.
Write down the Full computer name
5.
Click OK
To
share the printer
1.
Click start, click Printers and Faxes folder
2.
Select the printer that you want to
share
3.
Right mouse click on the printer
4.
Click Sharing
5.
Click Share As:
6.
For Share Name, you can leave
the assigned name.
7.
Click Apply/OK
8.
Close the Printers
To
install the shared printer on another computer
1.
Click Start,
2.
Type the name of the computer in the
run box with two back slashes in front (ex: \\computername) and then click
OK.
3.
A window with the computer name
should appear showing all the shared printers/folders on the machine.
4.
Double click the printer icon
5.
There might be a message as follow:
“Before you can used the printer \\computername\printername, it must
be setup on your computer. Do you want windows to setup the printer and continue
this operation?” If so, click Yes
6.
The Add Printer may appear.
If so, select No for DOS based programs [Next]
7.
You may get a message about the printer
driver. If so, click keep existing driver [Next]
8.
Select whether or not you want to make
this your default printer
9.
Select Yes to print a test page
if asked. Click Finish