Wireless Printing in Vista

Quick question. I think it may be impossible but I just wanted to make sure.

So I have the Linksys WRT610N which is capable of creating 2 wireless networks. One at the 2.4 GHz range and then one at the 5Ghz range for greater speeds clarity of signal right?

So the 2.4Ghz one is named "Home" and the other is named "Home Inc". My family desktop is connected wirelessly to "Home" and so is my mom's HP dv5t laptop. The desktop is connected thru USB to the HP printer we have. And the laptop is able to print wirelessly via the desktop. So both of them are fine when it comes to printing.

However I just got a brand new HDX 18t from HP and I am connected to "Home Inc" which is the 5Ghz network. I tried printer sharing thru Vista but it's not allowing me to at all. When I got the Network and Sharing Center it says "Off" and beside it "no printers installed". I went to the Network Map and my mom's computer and laptop are both there and I can access them. I tried right clicking on the printer and selected "connect". A new window opens titled "Windows Printer Installation". It says it's connecting to printer and of course is loading w/e it needs to do.

Yet I get this error message...

"The server for the HP Deskjet D4100 series' printer does not have the correct printer driver installed. If you want to search for the proper driver click ok. Otherwise click cancel and contact your network administrator or original equipment manufacturer for the correct driver."

SO I clicked okay although I was lost at this point just to see what it would do. It brought up a screen titled, "File needed: Printer Driver INF for HP Deskjet 4100 (Unknown) is needed". There was a message that said, "The file .INF on (Unknown) is needed. Type the path where the file is located, and then click OK "

Below is a box and the line above says "Copy from" and to the right is a "Browse" button.

Does anyone know what's going on or if it's possible to set up printer sharing for my laptop? Will I have to disconnect and connect to the other bandwidth network in order for the laptop to see the printer.

 

Am I correct in assuming that the printer attached to the desktop has been "shared" to the network?

 

Yep. It's been set to "shared" and my mom's laptop which is connected wirelessly to "Home" (please note the 2.4GHz range network) is able to print without any problems.

 

Okey-dokey. I'm thinking (largely because I don't know much about how the dual-band routers work ) that it might have something to do with trying to, for lack of a better term, "cross" from the 5ghz band on which the HDX-18T is operating to the 2.4ghz band where the desktop and the laptop are operating. Of course, since you say you can "see" the desktop and the laptop from the HDX, that may be a bad assumption on my part.

What OSes are the desktop and the laptop running? And what service pack?

 

Sorry for the late response. I figured it might take a while.

All 3 systems are running Windows Vista HOWEVER my mom's laptop and the desktop are running 32-Bit Vista while my laptop is 64-Bit Vista.

All 3 have Service Pack 1. And all 3 have Norton Internet Security 2009. Now keep in mind that NIS 2009 wasn't the issue the first time around when I was setting up Wireless printing with my mom's laptop.

 

I went back and looked at your original post - just to confirm, the desktop is the system the printer is attached to, and the desktop has the correct driver for the printer installed (i.e., never had a problem printing stuff from the desktop), correct?

I'm just trying to see if I can understand what that error message meant when it said that the "server" for the printer didn't have the right driver.

Follow-on question: Have you installed the drivers for the printer directly onto the HDX? That might be the source of the problem.

 

The answer is YES to the first part of your post.

And to the follow-on question no I have not installed drivers for the printer. I thought that the laptop would do that as it was "connecting" to the printer attached to the desktop computer.

 

bump for shyster

 

Sorry 'bout that; sometimes I cannot always get back online that quickly. I believe that, in order for printer sharing to work, the drivers for the printer need to be installed on each remote computer that is going to be accessing the shared printer. On my network, I have a USB printer attached via a wireless print server, and the printer drivers are installed on the two laptops we have. I have a headless desktop that I use as an ersatz home server, that I typically access remotely by using Microsoft's remote desktop protocol (aka RDP).

When I initially configured the RDP connection, I enabled sharing of the printer through the laptop that I use as the client to connect to the desktop, but didn't install any printer drivers on the desktop itself. I didn't think anything of it until I went into the event logs on the desktop one day and discovered entry after entry flagging the missing printer drivers, even though I had never tried to print from the desktop.

So, now that I've taken the super long way 'round to the point of this post, I would try installing the drivers for that printer directly onto the HDX and see if that changes anything.

You may also want to double-check the access permissions on the printer from the desktop itself to make sure that the new HDX system has appropriate permissions to access that shared resource (if it doesn't, it may not even be able to "see" the shared printer on the network).

 

I can see the printer on the network. I can click on the main family computer's icon in the Network Map and see the printer immediately. I've tried connecting it yet I can't. I know I've set it to be shared. That's how I got my mom's laptop able to print wirelessly.

And I didn't have to preinstall any drivers on her laptop to do so.

However you think I should try doing that first? And if so where would I go to find the drivers? Last but not least what exactly would I need to download. One file or multiple?

 

Dual band routers send/receive 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz signals at once
They are different and independent, ie can have different SSID security etc

11g devices log in to the 2.4Ghz channel
11a devices log in to the 5Ghz channel

With my Buffalo Dual band router I just kept both SSID's the same and the security both the same as well.
All the dual band router means that you can use 11a devices with it.

Now printers, I have a HP 3300 series printer.
This has a build in 11g WIFI card.
I can use the printers setup to log in to the router and this makes printer available on the network (pay to look up the IP address the router has given the printer to help search for it)

Once the printer is logged in, just a matter of adding a new printer.
Or running the hugely bloated HP install app.
Once you get to the directly attached or Network attached part of the install use network and put in the IP address of the printer (from the router)
You need to do this to all devices that need access to the printer.

If you plugged the printer into the USB port of the router (not as ideal as above) it's very similar but more fiddling to get all the protocols right.

In the end best to have the printer plugged into the router if sharing it.

Back in the days when I used the Buffalo dual band router, I used 11a for both my and my Wifes laptop.
And used 11g to run the printer.

All worked happily, until I got my Dlink DIR-655 and now I'm running just 11g

Not sure if this helps any, but I feel better for telling my story

 

Download the driver and manually install it onto your HP and then try to connect. Or you install the printer as a local printer and map the port to the actual network printer.

 

@ lixuela

Could the problem be that I'm using a different security setting for the 2 different networks? I don't think I am but I'll double check.

And I'll try installing the driver and connecting after that...

Okay the "Home" network/ssid has "TKIP" as the security setting while "Home Inc" has "AES" encryption...do you think that's important or could be the problem?

 

UPDATE:

lixuelai you were RIGHT! I went to HP's website and downloaded the driver (64 Bit version) for the printer directly attached to the desktop (the D4160) and I installed it. At one point it asked me to connect the printer but it said that if I was unable to then I could select that and press next. Then it asked me to restart the laptop finish installation.

Once it restarted it finished installing. Then I went to the Network & Sharing Center and clicked on the main desktop computer, right clicked on the printer and then selected "connect" again. This time it added it without any problems. I tested it out by printing a document from my laptop to the printer and it worked! No wires or anything. Just easy as 1,2,3.

Just out of curiosity why did I have to install the driver myself? Is that something you have to do everytime? I honestly don't remember if I did that for my mother's laptop or not.

Anyways I'm just glad it's working fine and that's the most important thing. And I'm so happy that the whole dual band thing for my router wasn't an issue. I was so worried that that would be the cause.

 

Well, I'm sorry for always being late to the dance, but I am glad that someone was able to give you the right help in getting the problem sorted out.

I suspected that the problem might be that the drivers hadn't been installed onto the HDX itself, and it would appear that, at least this time, I suspected correctly. Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for why you had to manually install the drivers on the HDX but didn't have to when you set up your mother's laptop, other than that's just the way printer sharing "works." Most likely, the HDX wasn't able to properly identify the printer itself (after all, it was looking across frequency networks and "through" the desktop to which the printer is attached) and may therefore not have been able to identify which driver needed to be installed; since your mother's laptop is on the same frequency band as the desktop, it may have been able to identify the printer properly and correctly install the right driver automatically.

The bottom line is, I just don't know; however, one thing you could do is to go into the event logs on the HDX, look for log items dating back to when you tried to print something to the printer and it didn't work, and see if any of those log items indicate what the particular error or event ID was.

 

^^^Well I never tried printing anything to it since it wasn't able to connect so that's not an option. Oh well the mystery of printer sharing. Thanks though for at least trying to help me out.

Happy New Years!

 

The reason is pretty simple. Driver is probably automatically copied over from the server to the print client. However your server is 32bit and your client is 64bit so the driver cannot be used. With your other notebook it works because it is also 32bit.

Anyway if it works Id just leave it at that. However Microsoft Word 2k7 has issues with network printer sometimes. If you ever encounter any issues install your printer as a local printer and then map the port to the network path.

 

Awesome explanation and it makes complete sense!

The only issues I've had with the printer from a Word standpoint is that there seems to be a bug on HP computers and HP printers when it comes to Office 2007. If you have your HP printer setup as your DEFAULT printer then almost any Office 2007 product is susceptible to CRASHING after you close a document or a powerpoint or a spreadsheet.

MS' answer? To not have your HP printer selected as the default printer. They say that it's HP's problem and that we should wait for a fix from them. To me that's stupid. I don't know who's at fault really. I just want a solution so that I don't have to go up to that little menu and switch from the "XPS" garbage to the HP printer. But oh well.

 

That sounds right - I'd completely forgotten about the problem with getting network printers to work properly in a mixed 64-bit/32-bit environment. Thanks for the explanation!