Printer sharing possible?

altich88 · 14 Jul 2010 at 17:45

Hi,
Basically this is the setup in our house at the moment:

-BT Home Hub v1
-one very old DeskJet 930C printer (wired to old pc)
-7 Year old PC (no internet connection at present, used to be wired(xbox stole port!))
-laptop (wirelessly connects to internet)
-my PC (ethernet wired to hub)

At the moment to print anything we have to transfer files via usb drives and print from the old pc. There must be a better way to share the printer between all 3 computers in the house, what possibilities are there and what would your suggestions be?

Thanks very much!

atmax1 · 14 Jul 2010 at 18:09

I think there is a way! but you can do what we did and just bought a network printer! lool

Tealc · 14 Jul 2010 at 18:48

You could set up the Printer as a shared printer on the PC it is attached to and then all other PCs on the network will be able to share it. The host PC will need to be on of course and connected to the network.

btw: I have 4 PCs sharing two printers over a network.

mattyfez · 15 Jul 2010 at 09:19

Yeh you can set up a home network and share the printer.

altich88 · 15 Jul 2010 at 14:01

I see, thanks all.

Is the fact that all computers connect to the home hub enough to setup a home network? If so how do I go about this?

The old pc and lappy run xp whilst mine has 7.

Cheers.

JW1993 · 15 Jul 2010 at 14:07

You will need to connect the computer with the printer attatched, aswell as the computer you wish to print from, to the home hub. This can be done either wirelessly or through an ethernet cable. I know that windows 7 allows you to create a 'homegroup' which makes home networking a lot easier but i'm not sure how it is done through xp.

Hope that helps

Tealc · 15 Jul 2010 at 15:11

All computers will need to be connected to the Homehub. They will all need to be configured to join the same network, called WORKGROUP or HOMEGROUP or whatever you wish.

You will need to turn on File and Printer sharing in Control panel on the host PC.

I seem to recall that once you setup a network you can create a disk to transfer the settings to other machines. I forget if this disk has to be floppy or if it can be USB Mass Storage devices too.

Gundog48 · 15 Jul 2010 at 18:35

I saw something ages ago about simply connecting the printer to the home hub via USB, google it and you will probably find out what I mean.