How to Share Printers between Windows 7 and XP

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If you have a home network and are running Windows 7 and have XP on another PC, you may want to share files between them. Today we are going to look at the steps for sharing files and hardware like printers. 

Here we have summarized several ways to share printers between Windows 7 and XP that can be done easily:

How to Share Printers between Windows 7 and XP

Sharing a folder between two Windows 7 machines with the new HomeGroup feature is an easy process, but the HomeGroup feature is not compatible with Vista or XP. For this tutorial we're using Windows 7 x64 RC1 and XP Professional SP3 connected via a basic Linksys home wireless router.

1. First make sure both machines are members of the same Workgroup which by default is named Workgroup.
2. On a Windows 7 machine, go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network and Sharing Center and then click Change advanced sharing settings.
3. You'll want to verify the following settings under Advanced Sharing Settings for Home or Work and Public profiles.
   
   
   
4. If you want every user to have access, public share turn off password protection. It's located in Advanced Sharing Settings at the bottom of the list.
5. If you want to keep it enabled, make sure there are logged in accounts for other XP machines and they have a password.
6. Now if you go to Network in Windows 7 you will see your XP machine and Windows 7 too which in this case is Mysticgeek-PC.
7. To share a printer on a Windows 7 machine, go to Devices and Printers from the Start menu and double-click on the printer icon.
8. Next, double click on “Customize your printer”.
   
   
   
9. In the Properties screen click on the Sharing Tab and check the box to share the printer and type the name of the share.
10. If your XP machine is x86 OS you can install Additional Drivers before setting up XP machine.
11. To find shared folders and devices, double-click on the Windows 7 machine icon under Network. Here you can see the printers connected to our Windows 7 machine are shared as well as the User Folders.
12. Proceed to the Users and Public folders to see the shared folders, here we also created a folder called XP Share just to keep everything in a central location.
13. On your XP machine, go to My Network Places to find the Windows 7 shared folder (mysticgeek-pc).
14. Double click on the Share folder to find the list of shared folders in the Public folder in Windows 7. If you have password protection enabled, you will need to type the username and password of the user account on the Windows 7 machine first.

XP Setup with Shared Printer

1. To set up a shared printer in XP you must go to Printers and Faxes from the Start menu and start the Add Printer Wizard.
2. Now select “A network printer, or a printer attached to another computer” then press Next.
3. Next select “Connect to this printer…” and type the path for the printer connected to the Windows 7 machine and click next.
4. Now click Yes for the confirmation message.
5. Then click Finish printer to install and complete the Wizard.
   
   
   
6. In some cases, you will need to install the x86 XP driver for the shared printer because the Windows 7 driver is not compatible with XP. When everything is installed, go to Printers and Faxes to find the shared printer.

 

This will help you start sharing files and other devices with your Windows 7 machine. When we first started we could see the printer right away in XP because we had a HomeGroup set up, but once we removed it we needed to share the printer like you would for a workgroup. You may also have to do several restarts of the XP machine in order to see the shared resources in Windows 7. 

That's the tips on How to Share Printers between Windows 7 and XP that we can convey. If you have experience sharing between Windows 7 and XP, leave us a comment!