I am having a problem printing on a home network. The printer is connected by USB to a desktop and is also installed as a network printer on a laptop. The network is set up and running properly - the laptop can connect to the internet via the desktop and file sharing between the two PCs operates normally. The printer can be seen on both PCs - on the desktop it is set up as a shared printer while on the laptop it is a network printer (with the icon underlined in yellow). When I send a print job from the laptop it appears in the print queue on the desktop with status as printing but the job never prints. I have installed and reinstalled the printer on both machines, installed a new driver and tried setting the printer to printing direct rather than spooling but all to no avail. Can anyone help please? OS is Windows XP Home SP2.

When connecting to a printer across a network that is physically connected to another PC you must first share the printer. Once that is done, delete the printer you already tried to configure on the laptop and start the Add Printer wizard. When given the choice between Network Printer and Local, choose Local. Then, create a New TCP/IP port and enter the IP address of the PC the printer is connected to. Then continue through the rest of the wizard and you should be ok. You can't add it as a "network" printer because it's not directly attached to the network with a print server or NIC. Since the printer is also not locally attached you have to use the above method for it to work properly.