Sharing Printer

Sharing PDF Creator Printer

If you already have your computers networked, sharing a printer is easy. If you have a software-based firewall, it may interfere with printer sharing. If you must have a software firewall, and it seems to be preventing printer and/or file sharing, you'll have to poke around in the options to find the setting to allow sharing.

Here are the instructions for sharing a printer on a Windows XP network. Start at the computer that already has the printer installed. Go into the Printers section of the Control Panel, right-click the icon for the printer that needs to be shared, and choose Sharing from the resulting menu. By assigning a name to the shared printer, you allow other computers on the network to easily identify it.

Here are the steps to be followed on the first computer (Computer001) where the printer needs to be shared for other computers,

1. Click "Start"->"Printers and Faxes" to go into the Printers and Faxes folder.

2. Highlight "PDF Creator" printer icon.

3. Right-click this printer icon, and choose "Sharing...".

4. Confirm that you have been acknowledged of any security issue if you are asked to.

5. Tick the option "Share this printer", and then specify a share name. The default name is PDFCreator.

6. Click the "Apply" button to continue.

It's a little easier with a network, because you can install the print driver right over the network. Go to the other computer that needs access to the PDF Creator printer, then in the Printers section of the Control Panel, select "Add a Printer". The Add Printer Wizard will step you through the process of installing the printer software on the second computer.

Here are the steps to be followed on the other computers,

1. Click "Start"->"Printers and Faxes" to go into the Printers and Faxes folder.

2. Select "Add a Printer" on the top-left panel.

3. The Add Printer Wizard will appear, and click the "Next" button to continue.

4. You will be asked to add a local printer or a network printer. Choose the "A network printer, or a printer attached to another computer" option, and then click "Next".

5. You will be asked to specify the network printer. You can choose either the second option or the third option to locate the shared PDF Creator printer.

A) Choose the second option "Connect to this printer", and specify the share name of this printer. For example, in your office or home network, the first computer is named Computer001, and the specified share name for this printer is PDFCreator, here you need to enter \\Computer001\PDFCreator

B) Choose the third option "Connect to a printer on the Internet or on a home or office network", and specify the URL like this http://Computer001/PDFCreator

6. Click the Next button to go through the process of installing the printer software automatically in a "Point and Print" way.

7. You will see the shared printer appear in your local Printers and Faxes folder after installing the print driver automatically.

If you don't know the computer name Computer001, you can use IP address instead. For example, use \\192.168.0.1\PDFCreator in A) or use http://192.168.0.1/PDFCreator in B).

If you don't want to go through the above steps, and you can simply click "Start"->"Run", and run this command,

rundll32 printui.dll, PrintUIEntry /in \\Computer001\PDFCreator