DIY Projects: Share A Printer Over A Network

Step 1

On the computer that you have the printer installed on, go to Start >
Control Panel > Printers and Faxes (or if you have Vista, click on the
start button and type “Printers” into the search box and hit enter).
Right click on the printer you want to share and select “Sharing”.

Step 2

Once the Sharing options window pops up, check the box that says
“Share This Printer”. If you want, you can also change the name of the
printer to whatever you want. Then just click the “OK” button. You
should now see a new little icon on that printer showing that it is
being shared. In Vista, it’s an icon of two people. In XP, it’s an icon
of a hand under the pritner.

Step 3

Now that you have computer shared, go to any computer that you want
to share the printer with. Go to the Printers and Faxes folder in the
control panel (as in step 1) and select “Add A New Printer”. Click next
on the first screen that pops up, then choose the option that begins “A
Network Printer” and then click next. Now you can either choose the
option that says “Browse for a printer” and see if the printer shows in
the list, or you can select “Connect to this printer” and type in “\\[sharing
computers IP address]\[name of the printer]” . For example:
\\192.168.1.4\Canon iP200. Then once you click next, it should start
installing.

Step 4

As an alternative to Step 3, you can also go to your network places
(Start > Network Places) and browse for a printer. Once you find a
shared printer on your network, you can right click on it and select
“Connect” and it should start to install. If you are having trouble
sharing files between Windows Vista and Windows XP, please visit this
tutorial: http://www.tinkernut.com/archives/117.