Vista won’t automatically connect to shared printer!

[LawyerRon]

I’m helping a friend with his new lap top running Vista
premium. I’m trying to set it up to print to his home printer
(HP C4250). The printer is hosted by his old computer
running W2K. We need to print wirelessly via his Netgear
wireless router. I downloaded the HP printer driver for Vista
and finally got it to print wirelessly but here’s the problem:

When he re-starts the lap top, he can’t access the printer
automatically on startup. The workaround I’m using now is I
mapped the C drive on the W2K box to the Vista laptop. We
then access the C drive on the W2K box and get the login box.
There is no password on the W2K box, so we just enter the
default “Administrator” and hit “enter” and we connect to the
mapped C drive. Then he can access the printer and print just
fine. I’ve checked “reconnect at login” on the mapped C drive
but the Vista laptop does not automatically connect to the
drive (or printer) when he reboots the laptop.

I’m missing a setting somewhere but don’t know the answer.
Help!

[EzyStvy]

Is the printer in sleep mode when you boots up the lappy? If so, does waking the printer up before bootup help?

[LawyerRon]

Originally Posted by EzyStvy Is the printer in sleep mode when you boots up the lappy? If so, does waking the printer up before bootup help?

Thanks for the reply, but no sleep mode going on.

[EzyStvy]

For grins - add a password to the Win2k box...Vista's beefed up security prefers connecting to password protected machines.

[LawyerRon]

Might be worth a try. Thanks.