Printer Permissions

Hi,

I have a peer to peer network and want to share a printer with only certain computers. After reading as much Microsoft information as I can find, nothing has helped. We are all running XP Pro SP1 or 2, and are connected through a switch.

On my computer I have unchecked simple file and printer sharing so I can access the security tab for sharing, but have not been able to set the printer permissions for the other computers as I can't see them under any of the groups or users. I do not have the "Look In" or "Look For" buttons that is constantly referred to in the knowledge base articles.

What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

Start>Settings>Control Panel>printers>right click on printer>properties>security. You should find what you want for control there, also check out the "advanced" button on that tab. Hope that helps, post back.

 

Hi TJ-IT,

Thanks for your reply.

I need to be able to differentiate between the different users on the network for individual permissions. I followed the path you suggested and still could not pull in their computers by name. When I go to Locations to find the other computers, all it shows is my computer. It won't let me browse to the network.

Any ideas?

Thanks again.

 

Peer to peer systems don't tend to work by trusting other computers (peers). You don't say "I want to allow the users on that computer to this, and on the other computer allow them to do that ".

Rather you set up users accounts on a computer and allow users on other computers to connect into your PC with those account. So you either let everyone access everything (the default dumb XP simple file and print sharing) or you maintain user accounts on all the PC that share resources.

So if you want George to use your printer, you create an account for them on the PC with the printer (give them a password!). When George want to print, he connect via that local account.

So first thing to do on the PC with the printer is to create accounts for all the users you want to access the printer. If you make the account details the same as those they use on their own computers, authentication should occur seamlessly in the background. Then in the printer share permissions add those users to the access list.

Unfortunately, since NT4, peer to peer networking has been sidelined, and can misbehave. Also if you share files or printers on a number of PCs then you have to maintain accounts for all the users on all those PCs. So above 3 or 4 users, peer to peer networking becomes hard work. If you've got more that 5 users/computers, I highly recommend you invest in a server. With a server, all user authentication is handled centrally. XP is designed to work with a server, so a lot of the systems become a lot more reliable once a server is in place. If you had a Windows 2000 or 2003 server, you'd also be able to set access by computer!