Hey everyone,

I'm trying to share my HP C3100 series printer to my brothers macbook with OS-X. I'm not sure what to do. I have the Mac disk, if that will help me at all.

He can find my laptop and login to it with the u/n I made for him, but my printer isn't listed. :rolleyes:

Hello there.

Sharing printers over a network generally tend to be more difficult than file sharing, as printers have problems of their own. However, it shouldn't be too difficult for you, especially since you've already got a working network.

I'm referring to the machine that has the printer connected to it as the "server", and any machines connecting to it as "clients".

On the server machine

You're going to need to enable printer sharing on Mac OS X first.

1. Click on the Apple menu
2. Choose "System Preferences"
3. Click on the "Sharing" icon

Then highlight "Printer sharing" and click "start".
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/7964/picture1fc7.png

On the client machine
To connect to the shared printer, you're going to have to take advantage of Bonjour, Apple's network service for detecting devices.

1. Open a new Finder window
2. Navigate to the Applications folder, and choose the subfolder Utilities
3. Start "Printer Setup Utility"
4. You'll see a list of currently added printers. Click the "add" button
5. Make sure "Default browser" is selected

http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/2571/picture2uy3.png
Wait until your printer is listed, and then select it, choose the correct driver and enter a name for it (if you don't want the default).

Additionally, your computer may need drivers for your printer, so have the driver CD that came with your printer handy.

Hope this helps

The printer server is Windows Server2003. Sorry, I guess I didn't mention that. I looked in the Additional Drivers... section but it's all Windows based. Is there anywhere to store the Mac drivers?


I will try part b) and let you know what happens. Currently I'm having a network user problem which I've posted about here: http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread68841.html


edit) We tried part b) and he can see my computer. I think his login just isn't working correctly.

No you didn't! :cry:

Nah, no problem buddy, but I don't have enough experience with Windows 2003 server to help you out with that. I'd be happy to help you with the Mac side of it, or as much as I can.

So the PC can't connect to the printer server either?

Right-a-mundo.

I tried a similar scenario with my other brother's PC; windows XP. He gets a login error when trying to use the account I set him up. But if he logs in as administrator, off he goes to my system. This is what makes me think it's a user error on my part.

It's definitely got something to do with the server configuration, because somehow Windows 2003 isn't allowing the users you specified access to the printer.