Problem: A user reported that her laptop couldn't access her printer. I found that the printer was directly connected to another machine which was serving the printer to 2 other machines in a peer-to-peer relationship. The print "server" and the 2 other machines were all running XP. The laptop in question was running Win 98.
Solution: I don't see many machines running Win 98 anymore and the longer I'm away from these wonderful relics the less I remember about them. So there was a lot of head scratching and fumbling around while trying to make this work. I finally got it to work by checking/adjusting 3 things:
- I made sure the share name was short enough. Win 9x can handle up to 12 character share names. I used 8 characters.
- I set the Win 98 workgroup name to the domain name used by the other 3 machines. Before I did this, the Win 98 machine couldn't even locate the printer on the network.
- I set the Win 98 Client for Microsoft Networks properties to logon to the same domain. I then instructed the user to always logon to the domain with the Win 98 machine. This is the only way the print "server" will let the Win 98 machine use the printer without entering a password every time.
Editorial Comment: I hate peer-to-peer print sharing. For one thing, average users don't seem to understand that the print "server" has to be up and running so their peers can print. They just turn the machine off and go home for the day. Even when the sharing is working it's often very slow. And worst of all, trouble shooting the problems can be extremely time consuming. In the above case, if the user didn't have to pay me to get it working, she could have easily bought another printer for exclusive use by the laptop, and let me get some much needed sleep.
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