mgross333
asked on
Windows Printer Sharing on Win 7 PC to Printer on Win XP PC
This is for a customer; I fix PCs for a living.
Mother wants to print to Brother HL-2140 BW Laser Printer connected with a usb cable to a Windows XP SP3 PC from a **brand new** Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OS PC using Windows File sharing. This question is NOT about Network printing; please note that.
Daughter ALREADY ALSO has a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OS laptop and claims it works which I was unable to test as printer had a HW problem and was not working when daughter laptop was available. By time I fixed printer HW problem she was gone so I could not test her claim.
As for other driver versions on XP PC (if you do not know what I mean by that you are not qualified to reply to this quuestion) the XP Printer showed Win XP and Win 2000 for Intel (cpu) driver was checked and all the other choices were unchecked. THE POINT IS NONE OF THE OTHER CHOICES MENTIONED Win 7 or Vista or most importantly 64 bit OS.
Hence in theory it is impossible for the daughter laptop to print as it requires her getting the Win 7 64 bit OS driver for this printer FROM the Win XP printer install,. I do NOT mean getting it from the Brother website !! Again if you do not agree with the part about getting it from Brother website , you are not qualified to reply here. For Windows printer sharing to work the far away PC needs to get the driver **FROM** the install on the PC that the printer is connected to with a usb cable NOT from the manufacturer website.
Since the other drivers available on the XP PC printer install went up to Windows XP on intel AND NO LATER OS OR ANY 64 BIT OS it is impossible that the daughter can print to it YET she swears that she can.
Also IMPORTANT; In Control Panel>Devices and Printers on the Daughter Laptop is "HL-2480 on Family" (which I presume is the PC sharing name of the XP PC (I did not check) AND also a local usb cable install of the same printer (which as stated above will not in any way allow Windows printer sharing to work).
Also XP PC has AMD chip, daughter and mother laptop have Intel chip.
PLEASE COMMENT on how daughter can print given what I state above
Question: Will a Win XP for Intel Driver work on a Windows 7 64 bit OS PC as that would explain it, right?
OR
Has Windows 7 introduced some kind of "emulation" so that XP drivers will work on Windows 7 64 bit OS as that would also explain the daughters claim.
Regards-Mike
Mother wants to print to Brother HL-2140 BW Laser Printer connected with a usb cable to a Windows XP SP3 PC from a **brand new** Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OS PC using Windows File sharing. This question is NOT about Network printing; please note that.
Daughter ALREADY ALSO has a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OS laptop and claims it works which I was unable to test as printer had a HW problem and was not working when daughter laptop was available. By time I fixed printer HW problem she was gone so I could not test her claim.
As for other driver versions on XP PC (if you do not know what I mean by that you are not qualified to reply to this quuestion) the XP Printer showed Win XP and Win 2000 for Intel (cpu) driver was checked and all the other choices were unchecked. THE POINT IS NONE OF THE OTHER CHOICES MENTIONED Win 7 or Vista or most importantly 64 bit OS.
Hence in theory it is impossible for the daughter laptop to print as it requires her getting the Win 7 64 bit OS driver for this printer FROM the Win XP printer install,. I do NOT mean getting it from the Brother website !! Again if you do not agree with the part about getting it from Brother website , you are not qualified to reply here. For Windows printer sharing to work the far away PC needs to get the driver **FROM** the install on the PC that the printer is connected to with a usb cable NOT from the manufacturer website.
Since the other drivers available on the XP PC printer install went up to Windows XP on intel AND NO LATER OS OR ANY 64 BIT OS it is impossible that the daughter can print to it YET she swears that she can.
Also IMPORTANT; In Control Panel>Devices and Printers on the Daughter Laptop is "HL-2480 on Family" (which I presume is the PC sharing name of the XP PC (I did not check) AND also a local usb cable install of the same printer (which as stated above will not in any way allow Windows printer sharing to work).
Also XP PC has AMD chip, daughter and mother laptop have Intel chip.
PLEASE COMMENT on how daughter can print given what I state above
Question: Will a Win XP for Intel Driver work on a Windows 7 64 bit OS PC as that would explain it, right?
OR
Has Windows 7 introduced some kind of "emulation" so that XP drivers will work on Windows 7 64 bit OS as that would also explain the daughters claim.
Regards-Mike
Apparently, I am not qualified to reply here.
ASKER
MPJHorner,
Regarding "If you go to printers, select the printer you want, right click, printer properties, sharing tab, additional drivers - in there you can add a 64 bit and a 32 bit driver."
Please READ ALL OF my question BEFORE replying. I said
"As for other driver versions on XP PC (if you do not know what I mean by that you are not qualified to reply to this quuestion) the XP Printer showed Win XP and Win 2000 for Intel (cpu) driver was checked and all the other choices were unchecked. THE POINT IS NONE OF THE OTHER CHOICES MENTIONED Win 7 or Vista or most importantly 64 bit OS. "
i,e there are NO 64 bit drivers to add and THAT is then entire point of my EE question.
Can any EE printer expert explain what is going on here?
Regarding "If you go to printers, select the printer you want, right click, printer properties, sharing tab, additional drivers - in there you can add a 64 bit and a 32 bit driver."
Please READ ALL OF my question BEFORE replying. I said
"As for other driver versions on XP PC (if you do not know what I mean by that you are not qualified to reply to this quuestion) the XP Printer showed Win XP and Win 2000 for Intel (cpu) driver was checked and all the other choices were unchecked. THE POINT IS NONE OF THE OTHER CHOICES MENTIONED Win 7 or Vista or most importantly 64 bit OS. "
i,e there are NO 64 bit drivers to add and THAT is then entire point of my EE question.
Can any EE printer expert explain what is going on here?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Mike, I have told you before that I enjoy working with you, but as the old saying goes this question provided you with a very valuable "lesson learned."
Closing this question by saying "I am the only poster in this thread that provided a solution" isn't really appropriate. The reason that you are the ONLY poster to provide a solution is because you aggressively said that you didn't want to hear any other methods!
More to the point, the method that you DID utilize to solve the problem is typically one of a few different methods that I suggest under similar circumstances. But in the original question narrative, you adamantly said "if you do not agree with the part about getting it from Brother website , you are not qualified to reply here." As a result, I didn't post my suggestions... one of which is exactly what finally solved your problem. You would have had that information at your disposal within an hour after your question was originally written.
In your closing statement, there isn't one word about how you were wrong, an apology for dismissing contributions in advance that obviously would have solved your problem, etc. Again, lessons learned for your future endeavors.
Closing this question by saying "I am the only poster in this thread that provided a solution" isn't really appropriate. The reason that you are the ONLY poster to provide a solution is because you aggressively said that you didn't want to hear any other methods!
More to the point, the method that you DID utilize to solve the problem is typically one of a few different methods that I suggest under similar circumstances. But in the original question narrative, you adamantly said "if you do not agree with the part about getting it from Brother website , you are not qualified to reply here." As a result, I didn't post my suggestions... one of which is exactly what finally solved your problem. You would have had that information at your disposal within an hour after your question was originally written.
In your closing statement, there isn't one word about how you were wrong, an apology for dismissing contributions in advance that obviously would have solved your problem, etc. Again, lessons learned for your future endeavors.
ASKER
Run5k,
As you chose not to post I have no idea why you are complaining later.
As you chose not to post I have no idea why you are complaining later.
I chose not to post? On the contrary, I was just following your orders.
ASKER
run5k,
Let me make my self perfectly clear. There are experts NOT on Experts Exchange. For example someone doing technical support on the phone for HP printers, don't you think they ARE experts on their printers ??? Well 2 years ago at a Vista OS site, I called HP about EXACTLY the issue in my question and their EXPERT said that IF the driver for Vista was not on the XP PC with the printer install there AND could not be added by the following approach:
--------------------------
If you go to printers, select the printer you want, right click, printer properties, sharing tab, additional drivers
--------------------------
then there was no way to get Windows printer sharing to work on the Vista PC with the printer connected locally to the XP PC.
As I noted above that was the case here. There was no Windows 7 or 64 bit OS driver of any kind that could be added.
Hence Windows file sharing between the Win 7 64 bit OS PC and the XP PC is impossible.
Yet it worked. Did you notice that I said that BEFORE the Windows 7 PC said the driver was installed it said it was searching Windows update for the driver and then took 5 minutes to do it.
Circumstantial evidence is that some genius at MS noticed that Windows file sharing was close to useless going forward to later OS's because at the earlier time the later OS did not even exist so the printer vendor did not provide the option to install a driver for an OS that was unknown at the time. And that Windows file sharing ONLY worked for current OS (but different cpu chip) and previous OS's. And that from MS's point of view that was an important limitation for Windows file sharing.
So in Windows 7 they added a NEW feature where they get the driver from Windows update and install it and Windows file sharing works. Do I know that for sure ?? NO. But circumstantial evidence (read my post that I selected as a solution) strongly suggests that this theory is true.
I am not done yet. I still contend that going to the Brother website and getting the Win 7 driver will NOT work as that is the driver for connecting the printer locally to the Win 7 PC (and I take it THAT is the point that you disagree with and the reason you then did not post). Windows 7 is doing some kind of magic here to get the driver needed for Windows file sharing on a Windows 7 PC; I do not know the details.
Mike
Let me make my self perfectly clear. There are experts NOT on Experts Exchange. For example someone doing technical support on the phone for HP printers, don't you think they ARE experts on their printers ??? Well 2 years ago at a Vista OS site, I called HP about EXACTLY the issue in my question and their EXPERT said that IF the driver for Vista was not on the XP PC with the printer install there AND could not be added by the following approach:
--------------------------
If you go to printers, select the printer you want, right click, printer properties, sharing tab, additional drivers
--------------------------
then there was no way to get Windows printer sharing to work on the Vista PC with the printer connected locally to the XP PC.
As I noted above that was the case here. There was no Windows 7 or 64 bit OS driver of any kind that could be added.
Hence Windows file sharing between the Win 7 64 bit OS PC and the XP PC is impossible.
Yet it worked. Did you notice that I said that BEFORE the Windows 7 PC said the driver was installed it said it was searching Windows update for the driver and then took 5 minutes to do it.
Circumstantial evidence is that some genius at MS noticed that Windows file sharing was close to useless going forward to later OS's because at the earlier time the later OS did not even exist so the printer vendor did not provide the option to install a driver for an OS that was unknown at the time. And that Windows file sharing ONLY worked for current OS (but different cpu chip) and previous OS's. And that from MS's point of view that was an important limitation for Windows file sharing.
So in Windows 7 they added a NEW feature where they get the driver from Windows update and install it and Windows file sharing works. Do I know that for sure ?? NO. But circumstantial evidence (read my post that I selected as a solution) strongly suggests that this theory is true.
I am not done yet. I still contend that going to the Brother website and getting the Win 7 driver will NOT work as that is the driver for connecting the printer locally to the Win 7 PC (and I take it THAT is the point that you disagree with and the reason you then did not post). Windows 7 is doing some kind of magic here to get the driver needed for Windows file sharing on a Windows 7 PC; I do not know the details.
Mike
Mike, I know that you have the best of intentions but you obviously had your mind made up about this entire situation before you had even started writing the original question. I could go on at great length in an attempt to clarify all of this, point out the facts, and educate you on the details that you don't know instead of dwelling upon misleading circumstantial evidence, but I suspect that it really wouldn't make a big difference.
I believe that you are one of the most thorough question authors in the Experts Exchange community, and I admire your passion for the subject matter. However, drowning your posts in bold all-caps verbiage and telling people who is/isn't qualified to reply is destined to alienate some contributors.
Best of luck in the future.
I believe that you are one of the most thorough question authors in the Experts Exchange community, and I admire your passion for the subject matter. However, drowning your posts in bold all-caps verbiage and telling people who is/isn't qualified to reply is destined to alienate some contributors.
Best of luck in the future.
This is one of the common problems with printer sharing from older OSes to newer ones.
The easiest way is to download and install the correct driver locally (using a dummy printer and pointing it at LPT1, for example) and then try to connect, in which case it will usually then work when you try to connect.
There is no "magical" windows update solution, it is all fairly straightforward.
i.e. XP cannot offer Vista or 7 drivers, simply because those OSes use a totally different driver architecture, which did not exist when XP was built.
I regularly come across similar problems with windows 2003servers.
I sympathise with run5uk, and I believe that your method of asking questions is counter productive. You may be trying to filter out the casual poster, and it may discourage casual attempts to answer the question , but it also discourages valid attempts.
Many helplines are manned by script jockeys, who simply follow what they see on the screen with little real world knowledge.
The easiest way is to download and install the correct driver locally (using a dummy printer and pointing it at LPT1, for example) and then try to connect, in which case it will usually then work when you try to connect.
There is no "magical" windows update solution, it is all fairly straightforward.
i.e. XP cannot offer Vista or 7 drivers, simply because those OSes use a totally different driver architecture, which did not exist when XP was built.
I regularly come across similar problems with windows 2003servers.
I sympathise with run5uk, and I believe that your method of asking questions is counter productive. You may be trying to filter out the casual poster, and it may discourage casual attempts to answer the question , but it also discourages valid attempts.
Many helplines are manned by script jockeys, who simply follow what they see on the screen with little real world knowledge.
ASKER
I am the only poster in this thread that provided a solution.
when you share a print you just need to ensure that you include both versions of the drivers with it.
If you go to printers, select the printer you want, right click, printer properties, sharing tab, additional drivers - in there you can add a 64 bit and a 32 bit driver.
Then whoever connects to it pulls down the correct driver and can print.