Sharing Printers, Scanners, and Fax Machines

After you install printers, scanners, and fax machines, you can use the devices with your computer. When you are printing, scanning, or faxing, all you need to do is select the device in your application. If you want other people on your network to be able to use printers, scanners, and fax machines you’ve installed, you can do that, too.

1. Sharing Printers and Fax Machines

After you install a physically attached or network-attached printer or fax machine, you can allow anyone else on your network to connect to it by sharing it. Friends and coworkers on your network can then connect to the shared printer or fax machine.

You can share a printer or fax machine by following these steps:

1. Ensure that printer sharing is enabled on your computer. To do this, click Start→ Control Panel→Network and Internet→Network and Sharing Center. In the left pane, click Change Advanced Sharing Settings. Access the appropriate network profile, such as Home or Work. Under File and Printer, “Turn on file and printer sharing” should be selected. If this option isn’t selected, select it and then click Save Changes.

2. Click Start→Devices and Printers. In Devices and Printers, right-click the printer you want to configure and then select Printer Properties (not Properties).

3. On the Sharing tab, you’ll see any current sharing options. If there are no current sharing options, all sharing options are dimmed, as shown in Figure 1.

NOTE

Some types of fax machines cannot be shared. If this is the case with your fax machine, this will be stated on the Sharing tab.

1. To change the sharing options, select the “Share this printer” checkbox, Windows 7 fills in a share name for you. You can change the default name as necessary.

2. By default, print jobs are generated on the computer of the person printing a document. This is usually the desired setting. If you want to generate the print file on your computer, clear the “Render print jobs on client computers” checkbox.

3. Click Additional Drivers. In the Additional Drivers dialog box, select the types of processors other people on the network are using to ensure that your computer provides the appropriate drivers during setup. If you are using an X86-based computer, you’ll likely need to enable printers for X64-based computers. Similarly, if you are using an X64-based computer, you’ll likely need to enable printers for X86-based computers (see Figure 2).

4. Click OK.

Figure 1. Viewing the sharing status

Figure 2. Enabling drivers for other processor architectures

2. Connecting to Shared Printers and Fax Machines

When you are sharing printers and fax machines, you need to keep in mind that other people on your network might not be running Windows 7. Don’t worry, though: connecting to a shared printer with Windows 2000 or later is easy. Why? Because computers running Windows 2000 or later can install the printer drivers automatically once a printer is shared. The trick, of course, is to ensure that your computer provides the necessary drivers when someone tries to connect to your printer or fax machine. When you were sharing your printer or fax machine, you selected drivers for other computers as part of the sharing configuration. If you need to, you can add drivers for other types of computers by completing the following steps:

1. Click Start→Devices and Printers. In Devices and Printers, right-click the printer you want to configure and then select Printer Properties (not Properties).

2. On the Sharing tab, click Additional Drivers.

3. In the Additional Drivers dialog box, select the types of processors other people on the network are using to ensure that your computer provides the appropriate drivers during setup.

4. Click OK.

Once you’ve shared the printer and ensured that the drivers are available, anyone running Windows 2000 or Windows XP can connect to and use the printer by following these steps:

1. In Windows Explorer, click the Folders button on the toolbar to display the Folders pane.

2. Expand My Computer, expand the Control Panel, and then select Printers and Faxes.

3. In the Folders pane, expand My Network Places and then navigate My Network Places to the computer sharing the printer.

4. When you select the Printers and Faxes node on this computer, you’ll see the shared printers and fax machines (see Figure 3).

5. Click the printer or fax machine and drag it to My Computer→Control Panel→Printers and Faxes.

Figure 3. Selecting the printer to use

Anyone running Windows Vista or later can connect to and use the printer by following these steps:

1. Click Start→Devices and Printers.

2. Open a second window by clicking Start and then clicking Network.

3. In the Network window, double-click the computer sharing the printer.

4. In the Network window, click the printer or fax machine and drag it to the Devices and Printers window.

3. Sharing and Connecting to Scanners

Physically attached and network-attached scanners cannot be shared in the same way as printers and fax machines can. Physically attached scanners must be connected directly to the computer of the person who wants to use the scanner. Although network-attached scanners are technically shared, they don’t have sharing settings you need to configure through your computer. You connect to and use a network-attached scanner by performing an install, as discussed previously.