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I apologise if this topic has already been covered, but I searched and searched and could not find the answer. I have a network with 4 computers, 3 XP and 1 98se. They are connected to a DLink DI-624 router with a DSL Modem. The 98se machine and 2 of the XP machines are wired to the router and 1 XP machine is wireless. There is one printer and it is connected through a USB connector on one of the wired XP machines. The problem I have is printing from the 98se computer. When I attempt to print it comes up with an error stating that it could not communicate with the printer. I am able to print from the other XP machines. Could you please help me with this problem. Thanking you in advance for any and all help.
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The Printer was USB on the XP machine and set to be shared. The two 98SE machines had no problem using it. ( as long as the XP machine was on anyway ).
I now have a new Network Printer ( plugged directly into the Router ) and any machine can use it without any other being on.
That's nice BillyBob. Thanks for your reply. The XP machine with the printer attached is on all the time, so that is not the problem. How did you get the 98se machines to print from the printer on the XP machine? Thanks.
I have tried everything I can think of and more, including suggestions from various online sources, to no avail. The problem I'm having seems to be adding drivers to the XP print properties. It states if the printer is going to be used by another computer with a different operating system install the appropriate drivers. I have tried that and it doesn't seem to load the drivers. From what I have read, it says the drivers are on the win xp support disc. I can't find them. Has anybody had this problem before. Can you help me out please.
The way you are set up, your 98 PCs will need 98 versions of the printer driver loaded locally (on each 98 PC).
A dodge that usually works is to set up the printer on each 98 PC as a local printer. That gets the drivers loaded properly. And you don't need the printer hooked to the 98 PC for this - just force it to install the printer on LPT1 even when it tells you there is nothing there.
Then install the network printer - it will use the same drivers. You can then delete the local (bogus/phantom/never really there) printers from each 98 PC and just leave the real, network printer.
Another consideration since the printer is on an XP system is that the 98 PCs will need to have a logon with username & non-blank password. Easiest is probably just to use the exact same username/password to log on to all the PCs (including the XP one). If you have security concerns that make this a bad idea, you can make sure the Guest account on XP is enabled and then any username/password logon to the 98 PCs will allow them some access - enough to print and share some files anyway.
Hi Newt. Thanks for your reply. I will try your suggestion and let you know how I make out. The only thing that puzzles me is the XP machine that the USB printer is attached to, in the share part of the printer properties, it says to load 98se printer drivers there. I don't seem to be able to load the drivers that way for some reason. Any thoughts on that Newt? Thanks again for your time and consideration.
glarkin - in theory, if you set the printer up on XP and as part of sharing it on the network, specify all the other operating systems that will use it, the appropriate drivers for those operating systems will be made available on the XP PC for other systems to load when they connect. Great when it works since it ensures that all are playing with the same driver versions.
In practice, it works lots of the time but not always. We have a main print server (Win2K Server) with several hundred printers shared out. When we ran 9X clients, some printers nearly always worked as they should. Others worked sometimes and some rarely worked. But with around 1500 9X PCs and no way to tell who would want to use a particular printer, it was well worth the effort - even knowing it was gonna fail at times. It almost always works if the clients are NT based but 9X/ME is not such a sure thing.
With a small network at home, it just never made sense to me to take the chance of having some installs not work right.
Thanks for your reply Salvedum. I tried making user names and passwords the same, but it didn't work. In the mean time I installed a parallel port printer to see if it would work and it did. The problem lies with loading win98 drivers for the usb printer when installing it on the winxp machine. I have tried several different drivers several different times and they will not load. The win98 drivers for the parallel port printer loaded without a hitch and I was able to print from the win98 comp to the printer on the XP comp. So at this point I'm not sure whether or not it's a usb or driver problem. Still trying to get it to work. Any and all suggestions are quite welcome. Thanks again.
I'm confused. On the one hand you state that you successfully got the W98 PC to print via the USB printer on the XP machine. Then in the next sentence you say that you are still trying to get it to work. ????? If you are still trying to get the 98 drivers installed on the XP machine, why? You have already installed the required 98 drivers on the 98 machine. The only pupose of putting them on the XP machine is so they will be available to download to any 98 machines that try to connect to and install that networked printer.
If you are trying to load the drivers just for the sake of seeing it happen, then, are you loading them via Start-->Printers and Faxes-->File-->Server Properties-->Drivers-->Add and then selecting the Windows98 printer INF file from the Windows98 printer driver CD or the downloaded driver folder for the printer in question?
Sorry about the confusion dbrunt. Thank you for your reply.
When I install my usb printer on an XP comp it asks if I want to install extra drivers for different operating systems that may be on the network. In this case I have one win98 comp on the network that I have to print from. When I attempt to install extra drivers for win98 it will not load them. This is what may have confused you. I installed a different parallel port printer on the xp comp for testing purposes and was able to install win98 drivers and print from the win98 comp. I was not able to do this with the usb printer. I hope this clears up the confusion.
I'm assuming that you can "see" your XP computer from your 98 machine via the network, i.e. browse the hard drive, etc. That's a must. I have a USB printer on my XP computer, and have two laptops, both running 98SE, and I can print from any/all computers. I loaded the printer drivers on the laptops directly from the install CD and specified a network printer, not local. Of course, you can always change the printer port later. When asked to choose a port, I chose the network printer that appeared on the list. Voila! I'm using a D-Link 604 router behind my cable modem.
Bottom line: load drivers directly on the 98 computer, not from the XP computer. You should have a printer icon in Start-Settings-Printers. It should not be greyed out, and should be selected as default printer. If you can't print a test page, try Start-Logoff. I find that I often need to do that to get printing to work.
