[Welly Wu]

I have a Brother DCP-7020 multi-function black and white laser printer attached to my main HP a1700n computer that is running Microsoft Windows Home Premium Edition. My HP M7664X is running Microsoft Windows XP PRO SP-2. I am trying to install the Brother DCP-7020 printer driver for both OSes and printing documents, but both of our computers are failing to find each other on the home network we setup. We use MSHOME as the same workgroup and I even turned off all of the firewalls and anti-virii software on both computers. I also installed the Brother drivers on both computers as well. No luck.

I also have a Netgear WRG614 v6 router/hub and another Netgear switch installed. I have not tried to change the WAN/LAN or firewall settings as of yet, but I may do so based upon recommendations.

What do I need to do to enable file and printer sharing and get documents printed? I searched the Microsoft Knowledgebase and I am not finding the solution that I need.

Thanks for your help.

 

[RageX]

did you already do the network wizard on both computers?

 

[Welly Wu]

I just did that on my Windows Vista Home Premium computer. Now, I'll have to copy the settings from my USB flash drive to my other computers. I hope this works tomorrow.

 

[Welly Wu]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/net.../vista_fp.mspx

Follow this Microsoft TechNet document and it will solve any of your problems with file or printer sharing between Windows Vista and XP OSes. I wound up simplifying the name of my shared Brother DCP-7020 USB laser multi-function printer to simply Brother. Then, I put all of my computers on the WORKGROUP and I opened up TCP/UDP Ports 137 - 139 and 445 to enable printer sharing for Norton Internet Security Firewall and my own custom NVIDIA ActiveArmor firewall. Reboot all of the computers in my home and voila! It now works. On a side note, Windows Vista has simplified file and printer sharing as well as their firewall software, but it is when you start adding on third party firewalls that problems inevitably emerge.