Tech Support Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Printer sharing problem !!!

2K views 7 replies 3 participants last post by  LazyD 
#1 ·
Hello,

Have a room of pc's all on domain, one of them has a shared printer attached. I've connected to the pc's shares and installed the printer on all the pcs' and it works fine. I've also connected to that pc from other computers around the building and successfully installed the shared printer and got it to print.

Now, I have a few laptops that are not on the domain and cannot go on the domain, I connect to the computers shares fine, put in either the local admin credentails (of the pc with the shared printer attached) or the domain admin credentials, and it connects fine and shows me the shares, this shared printer being one of them. So then I double click on the shared printer and it installs fine and is available in my list of printers as a printer on another machine. When I go to print I get "access denied" or "the rpc service is not available" depending on what program I use to try and print with. Print spooler and rpc is running on both pc's the one I'm trying to print from and the one with the shared printer attached (it works anyway from the other pc's). If I unc back to the computer with the printer attached, ie \\servername and I right click on the shared printer and click connect, it now prints! Prints fine. Now, when I restart the pc it doesn't print anymore, every time I have to unc to the share and right click on the shared printer and connect to get it to work. Obviously not viable for average users.

Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Yes, RPC connectivity from spooler to and from a 2003 server is via machine account, and when not in a domain you have a hard time providing sharing. You might consider internet print sharing over straight RPC/SMB sharing, when not in a domain.
 
#3 ·
Hello, thanks for your reply.

Not sure what part the 2003 server plays in this as you say? The DC on the domain is a 2003 server (think the domain functionaly level is 2003) but neither of the machines involved in the printer sharing are on server oses, both are win xp pro. Do you mean that despite that, due to the domain I won't be able to print to that machine because the machine I'm trying to print from is not on the domain and obviously doesn't have a computer account in ad?

Is there something I could do with the computer account of the machine attached to the printer to somehow allow all machines, domain or otherwise, to allow rpc to work for everyone? I guess it would be a bit of a security problem but I wouldn't mind as long as I could get these machines printing.

I'm not familiar with internet print sharing, I'll have a look for that, thanks.
 
#5 ·
That would be a good place to start, yes. @LazyD: What happens if you try to connect simply to \\<machinename> from each XP machine to the other, and also from the server to each XP machine?
 
#6 ·
Wand3r3r: I did try enabling the guest account already but I'm not 100% sure if I actually gave it permissions to the shared printer, I'll try that in the week and post back, thanks.

Cluberti: If I \\ to the other machines from each machine they work, they just ask for authentication then show the shares as normal, same with server.
 
#7 ·
Interesting. So SMB is working, but rpc printing isn't. Would it be possible to install wireshark onto one of the XP machines, start a new network capture from wireshark, reproduce the print failure to the other XP machine, and then save the wireshark trace and post it here (after using 7zip or winrar to compress first, of course)?
 
#8 ·
Wand3r3r, made sure guest account was enabled and added local guest, domain guest and everyone to the print permissions and gave them all three permissions (print, manage documents, manage printer), still doesn't work, argh!

Cluberti, I suppose I could break out the wireshark and get a capture. I'm assuming since you ask this that you think I definitely should be able to print to this shared printer on a domain machine from a non domain machine?

Just thought of one other thing. The images on the boxes (both of the boxes in question) are a stripped down version of xp we made because the boxes are so old. Some of the services are uninstalled, I'm 90% sure that this shouldn't be causing the problem though as all the usual stuff is running and normal file sharing works, and print sharing but just from other domain clients.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top