Sharing a printer on wireless network?

Question

I have a D-Link wireless network connection for my DSL internet. The host computer has Windows XP Home. Two other computers have Windows 2000 Pro. I want to know how to set up a network for one printer connected to the host computer. I want to be able to print from any of the three computers to the one printer using my wireless connection. I have no idea, so the most detailed answer will be picked as best. I'm starting from scratch with no idea what I'm doing. I know how to view the status of my D-Link router connections. Please step-by-step instructions!!
Thanks in advance!!

I don't know how to set up a network either. The XP Home computer is directly connected to the router on ethernet cable. The other two are receiving the wireless connection using wireless adaptors. Will the computers automatically detect the printer through my wireless connection program?

Answer 1

Ok, dont think in terms of wired and wireless when you are talking about the same network. It does not matter how they are connected to the router as long as they are.

Click on the link below and read how to configure your XP and 2000 computers to talk to each other.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article04-108

Answer 2

You have 2 options ( or 2 a) and 2 b)

1) You have the printer attached to one computer and use that computer as a "print server"
What that means is that computer must be powered on and active all the time for any of the other computers to print to it
You then set up the printer as a network printer in that computer ( windows printer setup or the printer installation program)
You then install the printer software on each remote computer ( it must be able to commuincate with the printer in the printers language over the network)
Somewhere along the line the print sharing on the host computer must be turned on. I would assume with the printer setup wizard it would do this as part of its network printer install.
I see this model is a b . If you are doing high speed transfers on your network between computers you might want a g . One older slower b will bring the whole network down to b speeds. If you are only doing browsing of the internet or downloading from the internet this will not matter.
an easier way to set this up is with a program called networkmagic.com
www.networkmagic.com
You would install the printer on the host computer that is all. Then you would install network magic on each remote computer. You do not even seem to have to install the printer software it seems on the remote computers. It just seems to set it up.
The first 30 days of the software is a trial of the premium software which has print sharing features. The basic free version does not. You can choose to purchase the program or being more familiar ( hopefully) with network printer setup and knowing it can be done may want to set the remote printers up manually.

2) The second answer is that you purchase an additional device called a wireless print server


Here is an example of a dlink model

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=38

various companies sell them. I would advise you to get the same brand as the router . Ease of setup and when you have problems with setup dlink cannot tell you screw off.
My suspicion is that you would have to install the printer software on each remote computer.
I have never set up a print server so I do not know. However the instructions or dlink tech support should make this clear

Answer 3

dude its very easy, all you have to do is to share your printer to the network... START>PRINTER AND FAXES> then right click the printer you want to share click PROPERTIES, then on SHARING TAB, click on SHARE THIS PRINTER... gave name to it like myprinter... thats it!

when printing on the other computer, like in word, when you press ctrl-p for print there is a FIND PRINTER then just type the name of the printer like myprinter...

hope this helps you...