I have a computer with Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit and want to share a printer (Canon i470D) connected to it to a computer with Windows XP Professional. I used to use a computer with Windows XP Home Edition and shared the same printer to the computer with XP Professional and it worked. Now it doesn't. The computer with XP Professional can detect the printer, but when I try to add it, it says the driver is incorrect and asks me to find it. So I insert the driver disc to the computer, then select the autorun.inf and it says there are no available drivers in it. Can someone please help me? Thanks
Would installing the XP version of the driver on the XP Professional computer solve the driver problem?
I am not 100% sure about this but i think you need to have the 2 computers networked and have file and print sharing turned on both of them. Also you may have to keep the computer on that has the printer hooked to it for it to work
The printer is connected to the Vista OS. But I got it fixed. The solution required the printer to be plugged into the XP computer though. It did not work vice versa when I tried.
1. Unplug your USB cable from the back of the Windows XP PC and plug the USB cable directly into your Windows Vista PC.
2. The Windows Vista drivers for your printer should be automatically loaded and your printer will be installed on your Windows Vista PC. If this was successful, skip right to step 3.
If step 2 is not successful
i. Download the Windows Vista printer driver for your printer from
the manufacturers website.
1. If your printers manufacturer has not created a Vista driver
yet, retry step 2.
ii. Install the driver on your Windows Vista PC. During
installation, youll be prompted to connect the printer to your PC.
Choose the option to proceed with installation without connecting the printer.
3. After installation is complete, open the Printers icon in the Windows Vista Control Panel.
4. Right-click on your printer that was just installed and choose Properties.
5. Navigate to the Ports tab.
6. Click Add Port, then select Local Port, then click New Port.
7. For the Port Name, enter the exact network path and share name of your printer. (ex. - \\HOMEPC\Printer2) 8. Click OK and make sure that this new port is selected with a check in the checkbox.
9. Click Apply and then OK to close the printer properties.
10. You should now be able to print from your Windows Vista PC to a shared printer located on your Windows XP PC.
