Configuring a printer on a local network. How to make a printer network

Updated - 2017-02-16

How do I set up printer sharing? Until you know what a local network is, you don't seem to really feel the inconvenience of working without it. But when you already know its benefits, you want to use them for full program... And it is right!

It is foolish to rush with a flash drive from computer to computer, which are located a couple of meters from each other. And in order to go online to wait for their turn, while other household members play enough there. Try sticking to them while playing.

They will hiss so that you will forget why you needed the Internet. Here you will not regret a couple of hundred rubles, just to have your own personal outlet to the vast World wide weband go about your business without disturbing anyone.

We have already configured, created a common network for all computers, now it's time to set up a shared printer.

How to set up printer sharing

On the computer to which the printer is connected, open the Printers and faxes (Start - Settings - Printers and Faxes) ... A window will open Printers and faxes ... Right click on the icon of the connected printer. From the dropdown menu select General access… .

In the newly opened window on the tab Access put the switch on the label Sharing this printer ... Don't touch anything else. Click the button Apply and OK .

Your printer icon will now look like this. A small share picture will appear on it.

• We go to another computer to which you need to connect the printer over the network.
• Open the folder network (or by icon network on the desktop, or through Start - Settings - Control Panel - Network Connections - Network Neighborhood - Display Workgroup Computers.

• In the next window, select the icon of the computer on which the printer is installed and open it double click mouse.
• In the new window, click the printer icon again.

An entry will appear in which you will be asked whether to install the necessary drivers. Feel free to press the button Yes .

Ultimately, this window will appear.

In many offices, a local network is installed in order to exchange data, use common technical means... For medium and small offices, it is easier to install one powerful printer instead of several small ones. It is necessary to connect it so that it can be accessed from all computers of the institution. To turn it into a regular network printer, you need to correctly change some device parameters.

There are printing devices that connect directly to the router, bypassing the computer, but they are expensive. The easiest and most inexpensive way is to make a regular printer publicly available. It connects to one of office computers in a standard way - via LPT or USB port, then it is made publicly available on the web. This method network use printer has limitations in its capabilities. The computer or laptop to which the shared printer is physically connected must be active for the maximum time on the network. Drivers and software install on it from the disk always supplied with the printer, or find and download on the Internet at the manufacturer's website. Check the system is working. Make the printer public. To configure, open Devices and Printers (or Printers and Faxes) in the control panel. Find the installed printer, open its "Properties" by right-clicking on the icon of your printer. In the "Properties" window, the desired tab is "Access". Check the box next to "Share this printer". Leave the network name of the printer suggested by the system or set your own. For example: "OKI_C510dn". Under this name in local network the printer will be recognized as common resource... Give any name, but without spaces. All computers connected by the network have the same operating system installed as on a computer with a connected printer - click "OK". The procedure is complete. In the case when there are computers on the local network with another operating system, set for them suitable drivers... In the Properties window, under the Drivers section of the Access tab, click the Additional Drivers button. A list of drivers will open, in which check the boxes next to those that you may need for other Windows. Pay attention to the “Installed” column, if the word “No” appears there, then you need to put a disk with drivers from the printer manufacturer, or download the selected drivers from its official website. For example: Canon, Epson, OKI. You can now use the printer as a network share. On remote computer go to the section "Devices and Printers" (or "Printers and Faxes"), call "Wizard installing printers". Its window will open, in it as a connection method select "Network printer", then "Next". It remains to specify the correct path to the installed network printer. Observe the syntax: two forward slashes, a computer name on the network, a slash, a network printer name. For example: "\\\\ MyComp \\ OKI_C510dn". Click "Next". The printer installation process will end with the system prompting you to print a test page - do it.

Advantages of such a network printer connection: there is no need to buy new equipment, it is standard for Windows, simple in execution, without additional software. Cons: a computer with a physically connected printer must work before using it, its slowdown during a remote printing session, a long printout timeout, especially for color printing.

Hello.

I think that the advantages of a configured printer on a local network are obvious to everyone. Simple example:

If access to the printer is not configured, then you first need to upload files to the PC to which the printer is connected (using a flash drive, disk, over a network, etc.) and only then print them (in fact, to print 1 file, you need to make a dozen " unnecessary "actions);

If the network and the printer are configured, then on any PC in the network in any of the editors you can press one button "Print" and the file will be sent to the printer!

Conveniently? Conveniently! Here's how to set up a printer for a network in Windows 7, 8 and will be discussed in this article ...

STEP 1 - Setting up the computer to which the printer is connected (or how to "share" the printer for all PCs on the network).

To be able to use the printer with any PC on the network, you must correctly configure the computer to which it is connected.

To do this, go to the Windows control panel, in the section: Control Panel \\ Network and Internet \\ Network and Sharing Center.

In the window that opens, you need to open three tabs one by one (Fig. 2, 3, 4). In each of them, you need to tick the boxes next to the items: enable file and printer sharing, disable password protection.

Figure: 2. sharing options - expanded "private (current profile)" tab

Figure: 3. open tab "guest or public"

Figure: 4. opened tab "all networks"

Here, select your printer, right-click on it (right mouse button) and select the “ Printer properties". In the properties, go to the "Access" section and put a tick in front of the item " Sharing this printer"(See fig. 5).

If access to this printer is open, then any user of your local network can print on it. The printer will be unavailable only in certain cases: if the PC is turned off, in sleep mode, etc.

Figure: 5. Sharing the printer for general access over the network.

You also need to go to the "Security" tab, then select the "Everyone" user group and allow printing (see Fig. 6).

Figure: 6. Now printing on a printer is available to everyone!

STEP 2 - How to connect a printer over a network and print to it

Now you can proceed to setting up computers that are on the same local network as the PC to which the printer is connected.

The first step is to launch a regular explorer. At the very bottom left, all PCs connected to your local network should be displayed (relevant for Windows 7, 8).

In general, click on the PC to which the printer is connected, and if in step 1 (see above) the PC was configured correctly, you will see the shared printer. Actually - right-click on it and in the pop-up context menu select the connection function. Usually, connection takes no more than 30-60 seconds. (there is an automatic connection and configuration of drivers).

Then select the connected printer, click on it with the right mouse button and enable the option “ Use as default«.

Figure: 8.use the default network printer

Now in whatever editor you are (Word, notepad and others) when you press the "Print" button, the network printer will be automatically selected and you will only need to confirm printing. The setup is complete!

If when connecting printeran error appears over the network

For example, a common error when connecting a printer is the standard “Windows cannot connect to the printer…. "And some error code is issued (like 0x00000002) - see fig. nine.

It is impossible to consider all the variety of errors in one article - but I will give one simple advice that often helps me get rid of such errors.

That's all. By the way, if the printer does not print, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this article:

As always, thanks in advance for any addition to the article! Happy work!

Recently, many customers and simply acquaintances have encountered problems when setting up network printing with windows computer 7 to a network printer located on a Windows XP machine. The fact is that in small offices, local printers are mainly used, connected via USB to a work computer, which usually runs under windows management XP, and all newly purchased machines (which come with Windows 7) print to these printers over the network.

If you try to set up such a print server on a Windows 7 PC, there will be no problems connecting other clients. Unfortunately, when trying to print to a network printer on XP with Windows 7, you will most likely have difficulties.

In this article I will try to describe the procedure for setting up printing to a network printer in XP from Windows 7.

1 ) Make sure the printer on the XP machine is shared (the printer is shared). You can check this by right-clicking and selecting Sharing(General access).

We activate the option Sharethis printer and set the name of the printer. The name of the network printer must be less than 8 characters long and not contain any service characters.

2 ) Check that the network printer is visible from Windows 7. To do this, open the Control Panel and press the button NetworkandInternet.

On this stage in the list of network devices, you should see the name of your Windows XP computer. In our case, the PC name is Aseem.

Double-click on the name of the computer and you will see a list of printers on XP that are shared. You can try to add this printer by right clicking on it and choosing Connect (to plug).

In the event that all goes well, Windows 7 will have a new network printer connected to XP. However, if you see the message “ Cannot connect to printer”, Follow the steps below.

3) In the Start menu, select the item Devices and Printers... In the top menu, press the button Adda printer (Add printer).

4) Then select Adda localprinter (Add a local printer). Yes, this is extremely illogical, but do it that way!

6) In the dialog box with the port name, you need to specify the UNC path to the network printer on XP. In our example, this is \\ Aseem \\HPXPwhere Aseem is the network name of the XP machine and HPXP is the name of the network printer on it.

7) Next, you need to select a driver for this printer model (you can select from the already installed ones, or add a new one using the Have Disk button). It is best to download the latest version of the driver for Windows 7 for this printer model from the manufacturer's website.

That's all! Windows 7 will install the print driver and you can safely print to a network printer on Windows XP from Win 7. The procedure for setting up this bundle is simple, the main thing is to open shared access to a network printer on XP and download fresh print drivers for Windows 7!

In the event that you have any problems with network printing on Win XP from Windows 7, leave your comments here, and together we will try to find a solution.

2. Connection via an external third-party print server

There are many manufacturers that offer different implementations of external print servers that allow common printers to be connected to the network. These print servers can be either the simplest "box" in which on one side there is an RJ-45 connector for connection network cable, and on the other, a parallel port connector, or a connector for connecting a USB cable. Or it can be a more modern, combined solution, which is, for example, an access point to wireless network, network hub, vPN client and a print server connected to the printer via a USB port. But regardless of the physical implementation of the print server, the method for installing the printers connected to it will be the same, and I will describe this method below.

First of all, you need to install the print server itself. This is done in accordance with the instructions attached to it and using the software supplied by the print server. Usually this special program, which, at a minimum, should perform one important function for us: set the IP address and subnet mask in the print server, corresponding to the addressing accepted in your LAN (for example, the address 192.168.2.112 and the mask 255.255.255.0). After we have established the IP address, we need to check its performance. To do this, at least ping it, and it is best to go to its internal website by entering the IP address set in our print server into address bar browser. After making sure that the print server is visible on the network, let's start installing our printer.

In general, the installation is done in the same way as described above as "". Please note that although the printer will be a network printer in this case, we choose the " Local printerconnected to this computer ", then activate the" Create a new port "item and select" Standard TCP / IP Port "from the list:

This is the most versatile and simplest option and works in most cases. However, print server manufacturers may offer alternative options for implementing the IP stack for printing, and these options can be automatically installed during the installation of the print server using the program attached to it. For example, in the figure on the right, you can see that among the choices there is OKI LPR Port, which is added when the OKI print server is installed into the system. By clicking on the "Next" button we will be asked to enter the IP address and queue name for our network printer. Here you need to enter exactly the address that we assigned to our print server at the stage of its installation. The queue name is usually any word you like. However, in some cases it is necessary to use the queue names set in advance by the manufacturer of the print server, without which the printer cannot work!
Most likely, after that another window will appear, informing that the type network device not recognized:

In this case, you can leave the Generic Network Card option, or look for an option in the list, the best way corresponding to your print server. The most the best option in this case, the name of your print server will appear in the list (usually appears if the print server is installed from the disk supplied with it). Slightly worse, but it will still work fine by choosing any print server from the same manufacturer that your print server did. Further, the installation process does not differ from the alternative described above: you need to select a printer driver (either from the list or from a disk) and the installation process will automatically end with the offer to print a test page. You can do this if your printer is already connected to the print server.

	Unable to remotely control the network printer. External print servers offer only the ability to determine the state of the printer - whether it is ready for work or offline and set the parameters of the port through which it is connected. Current states printer (cover open, out of paper or consumables) are usually not available, and the ability to make printer settings is also unavailable.
	An additional power supply is required to power the external print server. This is not always a big problem, but as practice shows, people sometimes still indicate this reason as a lack of a solution.
	A high-quality USB2.0 HighSpeed \u200b\u200bcable is required to connect printers to the print server. When using cheap "noodles", communication problems are possible, which will be rather difficult to diagnose, given that the print server does not have very wide capabilities for diagnosing communication with the printer.
	If the print server is connected to the printer via a parallel interface, there is an already agreed bottleneck in the data transfer rate. In this case, you can wait for a print on a color printer for a long time.
	It is extremely rare when a GDI printer can be connected via a third-party print server. There are separate models of print servers optimized for certain printer models (for example, D-Link print servers for working with Canon GDI printers using the CAPT printing system). But in general, connecting GDI printers to a network via external print servers is not necessarily a solution. In fact, more often you have to break off with this than end up getting a working bundle.
	If the printer does not have a developed display and a software status monitor is used to control it, then it will become impossible to use this program through an external print server, and therefore it will not be possible to monitor the printer and configure / maintain it.

3. Connection via "native" network card / print server.

Many printers include the installation of an internal network card made specifically for this model (or for several models from this manufacturer). In this case, the card is installed on the internal system bus of the printer and therefore the data is transferred to the printer at the highest possible speed for the network. In addition, the internal network card allows the printer to be controlled via the network and, on the other hand, the network card settings can be changed through the printer control panel. As you might guess, the "native" network card is an attribute of not the cheapest printer models and, being not a universal device produced in relatively small quantities, has a rather high cost.

If our printer is equipped with a network card (standard or added to it as an option), then the manufacturer most likely offers the option automatic installation network printer from the disc supplied with the printer. In this case, it is enough to indicate that the printer is a network printer and the installer will configure everything automatically. You may only need to specify the printer's IP address if it was not automatically assigned to it by your DHCP or BOOTP server. Sometimes, if the address is not automatically assigned, you need to set it manually - either from the printer control panel, or using external programsupplied on disc or available for download from the manufacturer's website. For example, OKI calls this program NIC Setup Utility. It allows you to find all OKI network printers on the network and assign them IP addresses and subnet masks. Other manufacturers have similar utilities. The automatic installer, located on the corporate disk, usually installs everything you need to work network drive and we just have to wait for the installation process to finish.

If there is no branded disc, then you must install the components manually. In this case, the installation will not differ from that described above for the external print server. The only difference is that the optional IP stack for printing may need to be manually installed separately. I highly recommend doing this rather than using standard system Microsoft TCP / IP Printing, since when you install the proprietary LPR protocol, data transfer will be more stable, faster and you will have several useful functions available, such as, for example, pooling printers or redirecting printing to alternative network printers.

When installing the driver manually, the easiest way is to first install it "on the parallel port" in the same way as described above in the alternative, and then by running the LPR utility, switch the printer to it.

Advantages of this method of connecting to a network printer:

	It is fully integrated, professional solutionthat allows you to implement network printing in the most efficient way
	High speed data transfer to a network printer, not limited by slow interfaces
	The ability to remotely monitor a network printer, including through the internal printer website, with tracking of all its states.
	Control network settings cards can be accessed directly from the printer control panel.
	There is no need to use an additional power supply or use one of the computers on the network.

The limitations of this method of connecting to a network printer:

Price