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Hope somebody can help me. I installed MS Office 2007 Home and Student edition on both a new acer laptop running vista home edition and an older Dell laptop running XP Pro. As soon as I did so both computers will no longer recognize my shared printer on my wireless network. I have two wireless networks one at home and one at a business both have differant routers and differant shared printers. Prior to installling Office I had no problem using the printer on either network with either computer. Now both computers cannot find a shared printer but they will access the internet. I even tried uninstalling Office but the the computers still will not see the printers. Unfortunatley for me MS does not suppport an OEM edition of windows, and Acer states that they do not support any software only the hardware on the computer.

Thanks
W. McArthur

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correctly traced the symptom to a missing or broken network client binding; the machines still accessed the Internet but could not resolve or talk to Windows file/printer shares. Below are practical, safe steps and extra checks to restore printer sharing and to troubleshoot if reinstalling the client does not immediately fix the problem.

To re-add the client (both XP and Vista/7 follow the same idea from the adapter):

  • Open Control Panel -> Network Connections (or Network and Sharing Center -> Change adapter settings on Vista/7).
  • Right‑click the active adapter (Wireless or Local Area) -> Properties.
  • Click Install -> Client -> select "Client for Microsoft Networks" -> OK.
    If it is not listed, use Have Disk and point to the Windows installation media or the %systemroot%\inf folder to load the client INF. Restart after adding.

If re-adding the client does not restore printer access, check these items:

  • File and Printer Sharing is enabled in the adapter properties and in Network and Sharing Center (Network Discovery on Vista/7).
  • Windows services: Workstation (LanmanWorkstation), Server (LanmanServer on the host PC), and TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper are started and set appropriately.
  • Firewall rules or third‑party security: allow File and Printer Sharing (TCP 139/445, UDP 137/138) or temporarily disable the firewall to test.
  • NetBIOS over TCP/IP is enabled in IPv4 -> Advanced -> WINS if older name resolution is used.
  • Try connecting directly by UNC: \hostname\printershare or \IPaddress\printershare to rule out name resolution.

Useful commands to run from an elevated prompt (restart after these):

netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
ipconfig /flushdns

If problems persist, update/reinstall the network adapter driver, run System File Checker (sfc /scannow) or restore to a pre-install System Restore point. The steps above reflect the practical follow-up to ’s discovery and will resolve most cases where the network client/bindings are missing or corrupted.

Member Avatar for wmcarthur

I have found the root cause for this problem and solved it. I am posting this for others who may experience this same problem. Somehow in either the initial installlation or in the subsequent suggested update Office either corrupts or sometimes actually removes "CLIENT FOR MS NETWORKS'. When this occurs some networking functions continue to work while others do not. The fix is to intall/re-install "CLIENT FOR MS NETWORKS".

Thanks for your views.

William McArthur

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