Sharing a USB pritner on a Mac with a Windows laptop

[sm8000]

I do helpdesk for a medium sized office. One of our departments is entirely a Mac house, except for two users who each have both a Mac desktop and a Windows laptop. One of these users needs to be able to print to a printer connected via USB to a nearby Mac, from his Windows laptop. The Mac is running OS X 10.3.9, the laptop Windows XP SP1.

So far I have gone into System Preferences -> Sharing and enabled Windows Sharing. I have also enabled printer sharing, the other Macs can print to it just fine. The laptop in question can see the printer, but print jobs fail. I have tried connecting it as a local printer via TCP/IP port (using the Mac's IP address) and as a network printer (192.168.71.95\Epson etc...). Connected by the former I get "The document failed to print" and by the latter nothing happens, everything just sits there. Windows thinks it is printing, but nothing happens - any ideas?

[emw]

This (http://members.cox.net/18james/osx_printer_sharing.html) link may have some information you need.

One of the key items - make sure you've selected a PostScript printer driver from the PC, not necessarily a driver for the printer you have. The shared printer will only accept PS code.

[sm8000]

Thanks, I will give those a look. I didn't know about the PS driver - not sure if Epson has one for this printer but I'll check. Thanks again.

[emw]

Thanks, I will give those a look. I didn't know about the PS driver - not sure if Epson has one for this printer but I'll check. Thanks again.Likely you can just use a generic color PS driver, like a Color LaserWriter or something, not just Epson's.

[sm8000]

Here's what I did to get it working:

1) Enabled Windows Sharing on the Mac, and shared the printer
2) Got the IP address of the Mac
3) On the laptop, ran the Add Printer Wizard. Added it as a Network Printer: \\192.168.71.95\EPSON etc...
4) When prompted to install a driver for the printer on the laptop, used Apple Color Laserwriter's driver, already included in the list of available Windows drivers.

[balamw]

4) When prompted to install a driver for the printer on the laptop, used Apple Color Laserwriter's driver, already included in the list of available Windows drivers.
FWIW, Adobe's PS Driver tends to produce better PostScript than the MS drivers. (surprise, surprise).

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=44&platform=Windows

B

[IanF0729]

Or, if you would like, you can use Bonjour (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/)for Windows. It's what I use at home since I'm the only Mac user and also have the printer hooked up to my station.

It was pretty easy to configure, I think.

[sm8000]

Thanks balamw! I'll give that a look if the user requests. Ian, if the need arises I'll give Bonjour a look, I've heard that name since beginning this quest.