G'day,

I'm incredibly techno illiterate and am having a go at setting up a home network. I'm seriously in need of some easy to understand help with this rather ambitious project for a network newbie such as me.

I have 5 PC's which are:

# One: P4, 512mb, 2.0ghz, Win XP Home (admin for router)
# Two: P3, 256mb, 650mhz, Win 98
# Three: AMD (xp?),512mb, 2.1ghz, Win 98SE
# Four: P3, 128mb, 650mhz, Win 98SE
# Five: P3, 128mb, 650mhz, Win 98

Also the following:
Netgear Prosafe Firewall/Print Server (for cable/dsl)- router (this little gem has both an Internet Port and Printer port as well as four Ethernet ports)
Hewlett Packard Deskjet 930C.

I have managed to network the 5 PC's - don't laugh - over two full days of hair tearing and many boxes of Kleenex.

My problem is how to network or share the printer.

I don't understand the difference between a network printer and an ordinary printer other than some vague notion that a network printer has its own LAN Card.

To network or share (whichever is the appropriate terminology) do I need to set up the printer on one PC as a local printer and then share the printer from each PC on the network?

To make use of the Printer port in the rear of the router does the printer that is connected here need to have its own LAN card (that is the Deskjet 930C aint gonna work in this port)?

I've tried to connect the pringer to the router and install using a peer to peer protocol on the Netgear resource disk. I can add the printer but cannot access it from any PC on the network.

Well if I haven't made you all as confused as I am by now, if you can help out in anyway I would be very grateful.

Thanks in anticipation.

Jodi

Hi. Keep the printer connected to the router. After you run the Netgear resource disk and add the printer, try this:

On computer #one, Start / Settings / Control Panel / Printers and Faxes / Add Printer

Use the "Add Printer Wizard" to browse for a newtork printer. If it does not automatically find it try using the IP address of the router.

Mabye you've already gone down this path, but it's worth a shot if you haven't.

If you still cannot get it to work--don't frustrate yourself too much--you can hook up the printer to one computer and enable sharing. Sometimes this is better if you want to be able to centrally administer (pause/cancel) print jobs started by other computers. The only disadvantage is that that one computer must be turned on to use the printer (and it consumes a little bit of processor time, but that's negligable on a P3 or better CPU).

Good Luck! Post back if still having trouble.

I have seen this before on different products, not sure about Netgear.

Open the properties window for your printer (the install from Netgear should have added one) and look at the ports page. Open the properties window for the port that is checked and verify that the ip address matches that of the internal ip address of your Netgear router (default gateway address on pc).

Your printer will work fine with the Netgear Print Server so you can rest there. :o)

Firstly, the difference between a local and network printer is that a local one is connected directly to the PC that will print to it. A network printer is connected to a network share and can be access across the network, whether it be connected to a PC directly and shared from there, or connected to a print server.

You can get printers that have a print serve built it that remove the need to have an external unit.

I don't feel you are doing anything wrong.
The setup on the Netgear CD should contain somewhere the software for the Printer Server. This software must be installed on all PCs on the network that you want to have access to the printer.
The software should automatically find the print server on the network and load the relevant printer port into your system (i.e. "\PSxxxxxx\printer1\" or something like that)
Remember this has to be done on all the PCs.

Loading the drivers for the printer and getting it to recognise that port may be the complicated part as your printer software will want to allocat the port called "LPT1".
Is this making sense?

The easiest way to try it may be to just run the printer setup on each PC (even if it tells it to print to LPT1).
Then manually go into the printer properties and change the port from LPT1 to the shared printserver port created previously.

Does any of this help? LOL
Let me know.

Wow you guys are absolutely awesome! Thanks bunches for your help.

Cyberslug: Yeah, I did try your suggestion initially. For some reason it wouldn't recognise the router IP address to locate the printer. I thought "hmm maybe I've got the wrong number typed in" but I tried the IP address for each device and the router IP address itself to no avail.

I did retry using your reply as a step by step prompt. Again no luck. So from there I unplugged the printer and plugged it into the back of #one, and installed the printer locally and was then at least able to see a printer icon for it somewhere on the entire network :)

Dwdino: After installing the printer on #one I finally managed to get the properties box up.

This gives me two options that are out of the usual.

1. _P1 Netgear FR Print Server HP DeskJet 930..... and
2. http://192.168.0.1 Internet Port

If I select the port shown at 1. and attempt to configure the port - Browse Device is blank as is Port name and no amount of typing, cut/paste, jumping up and down, swearing will make the information stick in those two boxes. (Do I sound frustrated? ).

If I select the other port at 2. the story gets worse. The configure port box throws up this lil nasty... "Security Options" box with radio buttons for "Use anonymous account", "auto use windows logon name and password (and domain if any)", and "Use specified user account". The first two tell me that I do not have access to the printer, and should try a different user name and password (LOL there is nowhere here to input a user name or password for these first two options!)

If I select "use the specified user account" and use the router admin and password it tells me the current settings are not accepted by the server please try a different one.

If I do nothing and just select either port and try and print a test page, nothing at all happens, the printer just stares back at me blankly.

Andrew: The setup from the Netgear CD, installs great, it steps me through the add port process, from this machine (# one) it locates a printer on Port 1 and asks me if this is an Epson printer (only port on the router). It gets to the Add Printer Wizard and throws up Browse Printer window, where there is the option to input a printer name or a box titled Shared Printers: In this box however is the name of the network and the devices, but no printers. Extending each node(?)(Trying to be clever here by using the correct terminology, maybe node isn't the right way to describe whats in the box! But you know, it's got the name of each PC on the network) doesn't reveal any printers. At this point I can see no printers nor will it recognise anything I have attempted to type in as the printer name, eg http://192.168.0.1 to something totally absurd such as \\123. If I click next the rotten thing laughs at me, taunts me and says "Oh no you don't, you ened to specify a valid printer name!" Yelling at it to tell me what that valid printer name is, or begging for a teeny weeny hint for what that valid printer name is, does nothing :/

If I install the setup software on #three (or any of the others) machine, (using 98SE)to LPT1, it tells me that the HP install CD is broken - that is the .inf file is corrupt. I can use the HP install CD no problem without the Netgear PTP drivers (ie uninstall the Netgear PTP Drivers completely). Once I try to change the properties of the printer to the router port I get the same issues as I mentioned above, two ports to select from and the merry-go-round of port config problems continue on this PC the same as on machine #one.

I really do appreciate the time you guys have taken to reply. I hate to be beaten, but I think the time is fast approaching where I must admit defeat and just plug the dern thing into the back of machine #one and just share it around (I wanted to make the best use of my new toy!!). After 19 hours on this one part of the project, I will give it another attempt and then surrender to the networking gods.

Thanks again!

Jodi