I have two windws XP computers both with wireless cards accessing a router
for internet. One computer has a USB printer connected. I want to be able to
print to this from the other unattached computer. When searching the internet
to find tips about how I do this I'm being told I need some form of network
interface card. What is this and is it necessary for wireless networking, or
are the wireless cards enough? Please explain in fairly simple terminology.
Thanks

paul wrote:

If both your computers are already accessing the Internet wirelessly,
you do not need a "interface card". All you need to do is set up your
local area network (lan) for file/printer sharing. When you get that
set up, to do the printer you may need to install the printer on the
second computer (the one that doesn't have the printer connected
locally). It depends on the printer. HP all-in-ones usually need you to
run the install from the cd on each client machine instead of using the
Add Printer wizard in Control Panel. Refer to your printer manual for
details.

Run the Network Setup Wizard on both computers, making sure to enable
File & Printer Sharing, and reboot. The only "gotcha" is that this will
turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a third-party
firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm Protection" (like
Norton 2005/06) which acts as a firewall, then you're fine. If you have
third-party firewall software, configure it to allow the Local Area
Network traffic as trusted. I usually do this with my firewalls with an
IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would
substitute your correct subnet.

If one or more of the computers is XP Pro:

a. If you need Pro's ability to set fine-grained permissions, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab) and create identical user
accounts/passwords on all computers.

b. If you don't care about using Pro's advanced features, leave the
Simple File Sharing enabled.

Simple File Sharing means that Guest (network) is enabled. This means
that anyone without a user account on the target system can use its
resources. This is a security hole but only you can decide if it
matters in your situation.

Then create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users'
home directories (My Documents) or Program Files, but you can share
folders inside those directories. A better choice is to simply use the
Shared Documents folder.

If that doesn't work for you, here is an excellent network
troubleshooter by MVP Hans-Georg Michna. Take the time to go through it
and it will usually pinpoint the problem area(s) -
http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm

Malke

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