Problems sharing printer with XP and Vista

I have a family member that is having trouble sharing a printer with Vista. There are three computers involved. The printer is attached to the desktop running XP. Two laptops are running Vista. The printer is shared but the Vista laptop can not access it.

In fact, Vista can not even access the desktop. It can see it in the network, but when I try to open it, it says something about it is not accessible. But XP can see the laptop no problem. I find that strange.

The laptops connect to the internet fine. I have tried everything I could think of. On the laptop in the Network and Sharing center, everything is turned on except for password protected sharing and media sharing. Sharing is allowed through both firewalls. I have installed the printer driver on the laptop manually and that did not help.

I have read in a few places that the guest account needs to be enabled. What is the deal with the guest accounts? Should this have to be done? I have not been able to look at his setup again since I read that. Next time I go up there, I will do this just to see if it helps.

I have ran the network setup wizard on the desktop and found something interesting. The desktop is connected to the modem so I should choose the first option, which is directly connected. But it says it can not complete the wizard. But if I choose the second option, residential gateway, it goes through the wizard fine. But that did not help anything.

I was told by someone that runs a computer shop that Vista and XP are not compatible. He said I need to download something from Microsoft that would solve this problem. He did not know what it is called but something about relating to compatibility between XP and Vista. Is this true? Should I have to download something? I have never had to do that in the past even with XP and 7 on the same network. Now I tried to go to Microsoft update site on a totally different computer just to see if I could find what he was talking about and I could not go there. When I typed in update.microsoft.com, it just said go to Windows update in the control panel.

Is there something I am missing here? I have never had this much trouble in the past even with XP and 7 networked together.

It makes a big difference to know the printer make and model. Also check that the laptops and desktop are all using the same workgroup name. In XP the default workgroup name is MSHOME. In Vista and W7, for some reason they changed it to WORKGROUP. Try setup wizard to make the network a Private Network. Turn off all firewalls. But the main thing is if the XP driver does not serve itself over the network, you may need an XP driver client program to run on the other machines. Get the pritner make and model, then go online to the printer manufacturer support page and see what drivers, if any, are available for download. Some USB printers only have drivers in firmware.

The printer is a Canon i560. All the computers are part of the same workgroup. The network is a private network. I have tried turning off the firewall on the laptop and that did not help.

I do not think the problem is with the printer because I can not access the desktop at all from the laptop.

In the Vista machines try turning off all WMP medial file sharing. It wants to put it on by default.

So did you go to Cannon and see if that printer had a client app to run on the machines that it was not plugged into? I know my Epson did. I had a driver for XP but it also had a client program I had to run on other machines on the network. With Vista and W7 the driver is automatically served over the network.

Also what are the workgroup names for each machine? For some reason in Vista and later they made setting up the workgroup like 5 times harder than it was in XP. I don't see the benefit but that's how it goes.

I believe the media sharing is turned off. I will check that next time I go there.

After looking at Canon's website on my own computer, I did not see anything that looked like it would help. The only thing it had was a driver called add-on module for printer driver.

The workgroup name is WORKGROUP.

I think this is more of a problem with Vista or XP and not the printer or the drivers for the printer. Reason is because Vista can not access XP at all.

You may find this article helpful:

Teach XP and Vista to play nice on networks - Computerworld