LAN & Printer Problem

Good morning from who was yesterday a very confused, irritated ( but hopefully OK now ) BillyBob.

I put this in Networking because it does involves a LAN.

All machines are Networked via a Linksys BEFSR41 Router.

Machine A with an HP 5550 series USB Printer installed and shared.

Machine B. ( with machine C OFF ) When told to Print, a BLUE screen with a message about VXD VREDIR(06) having a problem came up. But hitting the ANY key the screen cleared and the printout went along properly.

Yesterday while working at trying to fine a solution I turned machine C on, the error on B disappeared and it printed just fine.

Machine C. Would not print at all. ( And has not for sometime. )

With all 3 machines on I installed an HP 5850 series Network printer plugged into the 4th port on the Router. All was quite well and both printers worked just fine from A.

Installed the 5850 on machine B and it would not work at all. Neither printer would work. ( no errors messages either ). I un-installed the 5550 from B and the 5850 worked just fine.

So I now head to machine C. NO PRINTER at all there. ( HUH ???? The 5550 did show there earlier ) So now I spent the better part of the day using Norton WinDoctor, RegSeeker and other stuff to clean out any references to ANY and ALL printer(s). Also making sure that ALL RB00X.CAB files and any other backups were DELETED. Rather dangerous, but I shut down Scanregistry at boot up til I got things cleaned up. ( it is now back in service )

Now my idea(s) ( wild or otherwise ) as to what happened are;

Machine C was machine B at one time. When it was moved and renamed I must have missed some references to the former B.

Or is it possible that I should have un-installed the Printer(s) and re-install it ( them ) when I moved the machines.

But as of this moment ALL machines are ( or at least seem to be ) using the new 5850 series Network printer just fine. Whether all machine are on or they are on individually.

OOOPPS !!! Getting ahead of myself. I do not have the 5850 installed on C: yet. But A & B Are doing fine.

Well. Back to work and hope for the best.

BTW. Machine A still has both printer installed and the 5550 is still set to be shared.

BillyBob

 

Well, I now have the new 5850 Network Printer installed on Machine C. It works all by itself the way it is supposed to and each machine is an independent unit the way I want it to be. At least that is the way it is right now. Tomorrow ( or even one hour from now ) may be a whole new story.

As I was cleaning up and testing various machines I suddenly realized that every one of the machines was booting up a bit quicker and running overall a bit smoother.

I knew that I had some problems with machine B but NEVER realized that they were related to machine C.

Untill I got into the mess I did not realize how much a problem on one machine can effect another.

But my finally decision is that I created a problem when renaming machines.

Local Area Networking is great. But it can be problematic.

A Happy User. ( for now anyway )
BillyBob

 

Yup. This networking lark is sorta fun.