How do you share a printer with windows Vista and XP? -

Make sure on your Vista machine you have quot;file and print sharingquot; enabled. Make sure you have a home network or workgroup established and it finds both machines. Install the printer on your Vista machine and set it for shared, give it a network share name, and then go to the Xp machine and map to that printer, starting with your computer name\printer share name.

It depends on how your computers are connected (crossover cable, hub, router, switch, and how many ports that equipment might have), to a certain extent, and which version of XP and Vista you have. Also, whether your printer supports networking or wireless also can change how you want to set it up. But first thing, you need to establish a home network. You should probably do this with a router to isolate your computers from the outside a bit, so, depending on how it s set up, people aren t probing your computer and sending huge documents of nothing through your printer (unlikely, but possible). How you proceed next depends on which versions of the operating systems you have, how many users, and how you want to manage the printing. Basically, there are a lot of ways to do it, but each way depends on some critical piece of information that you haven t stated: XP Home or Professional and Vista Basic, Premium, Business, Ultimate; As well as how the two computers are going to be connected - crossover cable, wired to a hub, switch, or router (and how many ports are available), wireless, and whether your printer supports networking or wireless. There are whole multiple chapters on setting this up in just about any advanced windows book out there, so it s not necessarily straight forward, depending on how you want to do it.

over a network