Basic home network question-sharing printers

[splunge]

I have a home network set up with my ink jet hooked to the desktop runing Win XP by USB and the laser jet connected to the router. My wife's laptop can print to both.
I just bought my daughter a Vista laptop and granted it network access. It recognizes the laser jet but can't find the ink jet on the network. I have sharing enabled on the ink jet. How do I get the lap top to connect to the ink jet?
Thanks for your patience.

 

[JustAGuy51]

No problem with InkJet but MS Network specific issue.

Read:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751005.aspx
http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/bm.htm

They are old articles but still apply to MS Networks. Between your XP and Vista, each one is looking for "Browse Master" and going through election process. In the election process, your Vista should become the Browse Master ideally (becoz Vista is newer) but sometimes doesn't.

Make sure the following are correct:
1. XP and Vista should be in the same Network Neighborhood
2. Printer and File Sharing is enabled on the XP

Once those are confirmed, you most likely need to set a registry key (usual caution applies) in XP,
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters\IsDomainMasterBrowser, to Yes so that it will always be Browse Master. Reboot the XP.

If still not working, try deleting XP from network neighborhood in Vista, turn on the XP for like an hour, then turn on Vista, then re-browse the neighborhood from Vista. In this case, you are trying to make XP to become BM by having it run for some time; uptime is one of the factors used in calculating who should become BM in the election process.

If still not working, research on the net on giving more weight to a particular computer so that it can become BM.