Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 10: Putting Your Wireless Home Network to Work
To share a printer on Windows XP, follow these steps:
1. Choose Start➪Control Panel, and then double-click Printers and Faxes.
Or simply choose Start➪Printers and Faxes, depending on how your
Start menu is configured.
2. Right-click the printer in the Printers folder and choose Properties
from the pop-up menu that appears.
3. On the Sharing tab of the dialog box that appears, click the Share this
printer option. In the Share Name text box below this option, type a
share name for your printer.
The share name can be any name you choose. We recommend something
you’ll remember, such as Danny’s Super Duper Printer.
4. If you have computers using different operating systems (for example,
a mixture of Windows XP, Vista, and even Windows 98 machines on
your network), you’ll need to add additional printer drivers to support
those machines. If this is the case, follow the additional steps
below, otherwise click OK and you’re done.
5. Click the Additional Drivers button. Select which operating systems
you want to support to use this shared printer, and also select the
other types of drivers needed for your other computer systems and
devices. Then click OK.
6. When prompted, insert a floppy disk or CD-ROM and direct the subsequent
dialog boxes to the right places on those devices to get the
driver for each operating system you chose.
Windows finds those drivers and downloads them to the Windows XP
hard drive. Then, when you go to install the printer on your other computers
(see the next section), the Windows XP machine, which is sharing
the printer, automatically transfers the proper printer drivers and finishes
the installation for you. It’s darned sweet, if you ask us!
Before you go out and start to put your newly shared printer on all your computers,
you may want to create a shared folder on the computer you’re using
to host your printer. In the folder, copy the driver software that came with
the printer. If, in the process of installing the printer on other workstations,
you need a driver that isn’t automatically available — such as an OS X driver
for the printer — it’s ready and available on your network so that you don’t
have to go looking for installation CDs to bring to the computer you’re trying
to set up. Trust us, this one can save you a ton of frustration.
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