Printer sharing on home network! HELP

[edrod13]

OK,

I have succesfuly networked two of my pc's with the help of many great people here but I now want to share the printer that is connected to my main pc. My main pc is running Win2k and I have a USB HP932c connected to it. My spare is running Win98se and I have everything setup correctly but I am having problems installing the drivers because I am using a USB cable. I went into the Win2k box and shared the printer, then into the printers tab of the Win98 box and choose to locate a network printer. Once I found it, windows says I have to load the drivers before I can use it. I choose HAVE DISK and try to install the drivers but it cannot take the drivers off of the HP CD beacuse It says that I have to use the setup proccess included on the CD. So I then executed the installation program off of the CD and it says It cannot find a USB printer on the USB port. So I am thinking I will have to connect the printer directly to my Win98 box, install the driver and then reconnect it back to the Win2k because its a USB printer. Or I could always get a USB hub but then I would not be printing through the network, right? I prefer not to buy a USB hub at this point in time so If I am right about connecting the printer to the Win98 box temporarily to load the driver could you guys let me know. I would think there would be an easier way but I do not know of any at this point.

Edrod13

[Blankman]

I believe you're barking up the right tree edrod.

[edrod13]

When I would BROWSE I just pointed it to the E: drive which is my DVD player. Before I try hooking up the printer to my spare pc I will browse through the Hp CD this time instead and manually look for the driver folder and point it to the inf file.

Edrod13

[glc]

The easiest way is move it to the Win98 machine, install it locally on the USB port, then move it back to the Win2K box. Then on the 98 box you add a network port pointing to the share and change it from the USB port to that.

[edrod13]

Thanks guys,

Last night I downloaded the latest driver for my hp932c. I added the printer on the win98 machine and specified a network printer. Once it asked me for the software I just pointed it to the new driver I had just downloaded. It was located in Enu/Driver/win9X_me and presto it took and all is well now. I was almost going to try your suggestion Glc, but it worked out by just choosing a network printer and pointing it to the correct folder containing the proper .inf files. Thanks

Edrod13

[glc]

Yes, to add to this, the best way to network HP printers is to download the "corporate" driver if one is available and use that on the networked machines just like edrod did. You don't need the full consumer driver package on the networked machines because it has the toolbox and all that stuff designed for a standalone machine - totally unnecessary, all you need is a driver.