Printing to a Windows printer

[Eric Sadoyama]

I am having problems getting my Macbook Pro to send print jobs to an HP Colorsmart C4180 printer which is connected to a Windows PC on my network. When I tried to add this printer to my list of printers, I couldn't find the correct model in the printer utility's list of HP printers. I tried installing the printer's software on my Macbook Pro from the HP driver disk but still couldn't get the printer utility to see the right driver. The printer utility did have an entry for an older HP Colorsmart printer, so I used that instead. It seems to work okay, but I am annoyed that I have the right driver available to me but the computer won't use it. What did I do wrong?

 

[cwedl]

have you tried

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=mp-42009-1&lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&os=219&product=1141647&dlc=en

this software is universal binary so should be 100% compatible and should hopefully work.

 

[Eric Sadoyama]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried that already and couldn't get it to work. The problem seems to be that the printer isn't local to the Mac -- it's plugged into a Windows PC -- so the OS X printer utility is trying to use some kind of printer emulation instead of using the driver directly. I can't remember the exact wording of the driver name -- was it something about gimp?

 

[cwedl]

may be this will help you

http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/3015.html

whilst its not the same printer it gives you indepth details about how to print from mac os x to a windows machine with a printer attached. Hope this helps.

 

[Eric Sadoyama]

Aha! That page describes exactly the situation I have.

In this example I have selected HP Photosmart P1000 - Gimp-Print v5.0.0-beta2. You will notice that I am using the Gimp-Print driver as the supplied HP driver does not work when the printer is shared from another computer. You may need to use a third-party driver such as the HPIJS drivers or the Gimp-Print drivers, but this is not the case with all printers.

Thanks! That's what I was looking for -- confirmation that indeed, you can't use the regular HP driver if the printer is being shared from another computer.

My model, the C4180, wasn't listed but I used the same choice as in the example (the Photosmart P1000 Gimp-Print driver) and it was a close enough match that it worked. I would guess that I may not be able to use every fancy feature my printer is supposed to have, but I haven't tested it extensively, so I don't know for sure. At least I can print!