Okay im a newbie to this so forgive me if i come across totally stupid. i have a lan with 4 computers on it 2 xp boxes a 2000 box and a me box. i want to be able to share my printer across the lan and also my scanner. I have absolutly no idea how to do it. can anyone help me do it securely so i dont have intruder problems. thankyou for all the help

Enable file and print sharing on all machines. Create user accounts on all machines. Make sure every user in your system is installed on all of the machines. You can share the printer but unless it is a network scanner (very expensive) then you will not be able to share the scanner.

If you do any sort of sharing you should really implement some sort of control on the incoming. It is quite possible for someone to remotely interface with your shared printer via the Netbios protocol. You should look into firewalls because later on you will probably want to share much more than your printer.