XP sharing

I have a client with a XP Pro desktop in his
office and a XP Media laptop. His desktop
machine has a Canon printer LPT1 cable
attached. When he's in his office, he'd like
to print on the Canon. His laptop is Ethernet
attached to his router.

Both computers belong to the same workgroup.
The Canon printer on the desktop is set to
share with a printer name of "DesktopCanon".

When viewed from the desktop, the network
appears appropriately except that the laptop
does not appear as a member of the workgroup.

My Network Places
Entire Network
Microsoft Windows Network
WorkGroupName
DesktopCompName
Printers and Faxes

When viewed from the laptop, the tree only
expands to the WorkGroupName but XP
issues a warning, after a minute or so, to
the effect that no members of the work
group could be found.

After I changed the WORKGROUP in the system
properties on the laptop, I re-booted as usual.

What I didn't see in the whole process was the
animated "permission hand-shaking" that one
normally sees, so whether the problem lies there
is something I've not been able to determine.

I tried repeatedly to "Add New Printer" on the
laptop, but each time I get the message that
the name is misspelled or otherwise unavailable,
not found, etc.. Using the wizard and searching for
the printer by name on the Microsoft Windows
Network DOES NOT display the workgroup
name in which to search, so that's the only clue
I have that the workgroup isn't yet properly
established on the laptop?

It seems that I'm missing something yet to be done
on the laptop side, but I can't figure out what it is.

Any ideas?

Bill

Bill wrote:

> I have a client with a XP Pro desktop in his
> office and a XP Media laptop. His desktop
> machine has a Canon printer LPT1 cable
> attached. When he's in his office, he'd like
> to print on the Canon. His laptop is Ethernet
> attached to his router.
>
> Both computers belong to the same workgroup.
> The Canon printer on the desktop is set to
> share with a printer name of "DesktopCanon".
>
> When viewed from the desktop, the network
> appears appropriately except that the laptop
> does not appear as a member of the workgroup.
>
> My Network Places
> Entire Network
> Microsoft Windows Network
> WorkGroupName
> DesktopCompName
> Printers and Faxes
>
> When viewed from the laptop, the tree only
> expands to the WorkGroupName but XP
> issues a warning, after a minute or so, to
> the effect that no members of the work
> group could be found.
>
> After I changed the WORKGROUP in the system
> properties on the laptop, I re-booted as usual.
>
> What I didn't see in the whole process was the
> animated "permission hand-shaking" that one
> normally sees, so whether the problem lies there
> is something I've not been able to determine.
>
> I tried repeatedly to "Add New Printer" on the
> laptop, but each time I get the message that
> the name is misspelled or otherwise unavailable,
> not found, etc.. Using the wizard and searching for
> the printer by name on the Microsoft Windows
> Network DOES NOT display the workgroup
> name in which to search, so that's the only clue
> I have that the workgroup isn't yet properly
> established on the laptop?
>
> It seems that I'm missing something yet to be done
> on the laptop side, but I can't figure out what it is.

What I didn't see mentioned is that File & Printer Sharing is enabled on
the desktop. Or is that what you were trying to show in the My Network
Places tree?

Some routers isolated their ports so hosts connected to them remain
isolated. This is a security feature of some home routers. They
default to letting the hosts connect to the Internet but protect the
intranet hosts from infecting each other, as might happen in a family
where, say, kids are allowed to be admins on their hosts. Check if the
router's firewall is configured to allow the hosts connected to it so
they connect to each other.

A host cannot recognize a printer for which it doesn't have a defined
hardware interface. That would be the driver. Did this client ever
install the Canon printer drivers on his laptop? The drivers are still
needed so the application knows how to convert its document into
whatever printing format is used by the printer. The network connection
only gets you to the device. You still need to provide an interface to
that device for your applications so the proper commands and data
structures are sent to that device.

Did you enable the File & Printer Sharing ports in your firewall? You
want to allow unsolicited inbound connection requests on those ports.
In the Windows Firewall under its exceptions, make sure the "File and
Printer Sharing" exception is enabled. This allows inbound connects on
ports 137 (UDP; NETBIOS name service), 138 (UDP; NETBIOS datagram
service), 139 (TCP; NETBIOS session service), and 445 (TCP; SMB over TCP
for file sharing). Your router should block any external connections on
those ports to protect your intranet hosts; i.e., inbound connects from
hosts outside your router will get rejected or ignored on those ports.