Sharing printers between PCs

I’m running a PC with a wireless ADSL router, and a laptop with USB wireless LAN adapter. How can the laptop share the PC’s printer? Both are running Windows XP.

The simplest way to access your desktop PC’s printer through your laptop is to share the printer. To do this, open the Printers and Faxes Control Panel on your desktop PC, right-click the printer you wish to share and choose Sharing. Select Share this printer and give it a suitable name before clicking OK.

Now switch to your laptop and open the Printers and Faxes Control Panel. This time, select Add a printer from the Printer Tasks pane. Click Next, then select ‘A network printer, or printer attached to another computer’ before clicking Next again. Leave ‘Browse for a printer’ selected and click Next.

Windows will now search for printers on your network and your desktop PC should appear. Double-click this and the printer will also show up. Select this and click Next, then follow the wizard through to its end to set up your shared printer.

One thing to bear in mind is that your desktop PC will have to be switched on whenever you wish to print to it from your laptop. To get around this, invest in a USB print server that plugs into a spare Ethernet port on your network. This will enable you to hook up your USB printer directly to it.

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