Q: I have an Epson Stylus printer in my house but its linked to only 1 pc. I also have 2 other pcs and a laptop (the laptop being mine) which I want to connect up to my printer. Im currently at college and constantly have a lot of work to print off. With only having one laptop I have the hassle of saving work to a memory stick and going to the other pc to print it off. As well as that, it can be sometimes hard to get my sister to come off the pc so I can get in to print my work. I have a wireless router which is a Linksys. Can anybody help as this is something that really needs resolving in the household. Thanks How do you find the pc it is installed on
A: I feel you on this one. Aggravating having to reconnect everything and be confined to a few feet from your printer! There are two solutions for this: if the first one works, GREAT- because this solution wont cost you any more money. 1. Plug the printer into a desktop computer and make sure it's set up and works on the desktop. 2. Setup your network through Windows network setup and make sure your computer and the desktop with the printer are part of the same workgroup (MSHOME, OFFICE, or whatever you want to call it, just make sure it's the same on both). 3. When it asks if you want to enable file and printer sharing check YES 4. Reboot both of the computers. 5. On the desktop, right click on the printer icon in your printer folder and enable sharing, you can set the share name.. (ie MY NEWLY NETWORKED PRINTER) 6. Then on your laptop, delete your printer out of your printer folder. 7. Now add your printer again, this at the selection screen, make sure it's added as a network printer. You should be able to browse to the printer, otherwise you'll have to go into the router and find the IP address of it, message me if you require further assistance with this. 8. Once it's found on the network add it. Use the same drivers as you had before and they will install. 9. Print test page. 10. Celebrate! If you're not looking to plug the printer into the roomies' computer, you're still not out of luck! There's a good solution and hopefully your college finances can afford it at the moment :) Since you have an Epson Stylus, I doubt it has network support, however it undoubtedly is USB. What you need to do is find a USB Network print server. This will plug into your Linksys router (wired ones are much cheaper, but there are WiFi ones as well). Once the print server is plugged in and set up, you'll be able to add your printer as a network printer! No more plugging in to your laptop! Here's a few I found: http://www.google.com/products?q=linksys+usb+print+server&btnG=Search+Products&show=dd Ben