How do I make my printer work with my wireless computers?

Question

We have 4 computers in our house. Three are currently wireless, one hardwired. We have one printer that is connected with wires to one of the wireless computers. Right now, we can only print using that one computer. So if we are working on one of the other computers, we have to save the file and email it to ourselves and go open it on the "printing" computer. How can I print from the other three computers? Is there a way to link it all now or do I need to go buy some more equipment for the printer? Or do only certain printers have these capabilities?

Answer 1

You need a network printer server. You plug your printer into this little box and plug it into your wireless router. No longer plug printer into any of your computers. Leave the printer, printer server, and router on all the time. You can turn off the computers. Printer's always available. Some printers already have this ability built-in, and are usually labelled as "network ready", or something like that; they'll have an ethernet jack on the back if they are. Anyway, Linksys makes these little items, inexpensive too. If the following link doesn't work for some reason, the device is the Linksys WPS54G.

http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1114037289494&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

Answer 2

there are two ways this can be solved. One share the printer and use it on other three computers. This way printing can be done from all computers on network provided the hard wired computer must be power on.
Second you connect a wireless unit to your printer and configure it on all computers.

Answer 3

2 ways.
1. turn on printer sharing on the computer that the printer is currently hooked up to. then just find the printer on the network with the other 3 computers.
2. buy a print server and hook the printer up to it. then each computer can connect independently.
first option is cheaper and easier.

Answer 4

The printer on the wireless pc needs to be configured to share. Open printers and faxes, select your printer, right click on it, and select sharing and follow the prompts to make the printer a shared printer.

Now go to each other pc, open printers and faxes, select add a printer, select a printer on the network or on another networked pc. Your printer will show up as a choice (probably the only choice). Complete the install and you are in business. Be sure to install the shared printer on all pcs.

Answer 5

You need to set up a little workgroup that includes all the computers and share the printer. Then you install the printer as a network printer on the other computers. As long as the computer that physically owns the printer is running, you will be able to print to it from all the others.

Look at this article:
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/smallbiz/products/howto/setupwireless.mspx

Answer 6

Connect the printer to the hardwired PC. Goto start menu, Pritners and faxes and find your pritner, right click the printer and hit properties from the dropdown menu. Now click on the Sharing tab and enable sharing for the printer. by clicking share this printer. (it might pop something up about are you sure blah blah blah. just click yes to share the printer)

now, goto the start menu and click run, in the run box type CMD and click ok, a black box will appear,, in there type IPCONFIG and hit enter.

you will get something that look like this
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : f
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.10.65.49
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.254.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.10.64.1

You want the number next to IP Address.


write that down,


Now goto the laptop

click the start menu, and goto run,
type \\10.10.65.49 (but put the number you wrote down , not the one i put)

Now clikc ok and you will get a winow in that window you will see your shared printer on the Hard wired computer,


on the lap top open the printers and faxes icon from your start menu and drag and drop the printer from your desktop window to your laptops printer and faxes window. repeat this for every one of the pc;s you want to connect.

Answer 7

You can share that printer with other computers on your home network. since it is attached to a computer, that computer will in effect be your print server.... Just look up sharing printers on google.. its not too hard to do.