While most users are familiar with XP’s Printers and Faxes tools, there are many ways to connect to and use a network-based printer beyond using the Add Printer Wizard. Although the Add Printer Wizard is still the standard method used to connect to (and install the drivers associated with) network printers, both My Network Places […]

While using XP as a print server for other computers on your network is great and inexpensive way to enable network printing, it does suffer from some key limitations and issues, especially on larger networks. Firstly, the XP system acting as a print server must be up and running all the time to service client […]

If you run into printing problems with your XP-based print server, chances are good that more information can be found in the Event Viewer System log. XP print servers are configured to log both Error and Warning events to the System log according to the default settings of the Advanced tab in Print Server Properties. […]

Most users are already familiar with accessing the properties of a printer in the Printers and Faxes tool. The property pages for a printer allow you to configure everything from sharing settings to specific properties settings based on the installed driver and printer model. Since many of the available settings depend upon the printer driver […]

Installing additional print drivers (beside those installed by default – typically Windows 2000 and XP drivers for the Intel platform) can be handled on a per-printer basis from the Sharing tab in the properties of a printer. Clicking the Additional Drivers button will open the window of the same name, as shown below. By checking […]

Although connecting to a network printer is a relatively easy task when using the Add Printer Wizard, there are a couple of caveats and limitations that you’ll need to keep in mind when using XP as a print server. The first is that XP supports a maximum of 10 simultaneous printing requests. Once this limit […]

Many users get confused by the concept of a print server, so it’s worth exploring before getting into the details of network printing. The simplest way to describe a print server is as a central system to which clients send their documents to be spooled, queued, and ultimately sent to a print device. For example, […]

Before you get too worried about the idea of configuring your XP system as any type of server, keep in mind that any system hosting shared resources is already performing server-based functions. For example, if you’ve already shared a folder on your system, XP is acting as a file server. Share a printer, and you’ve […]

If your Windows XP system is part of a network, then you’re probably already familiar with the concept of using it as a network client or server. In simple terms, a server is any system to which other network systems connect for the purpose of sharing resources like files or printers, while a client is […]