Can't find printer shared on Windows machine

Question

I don't know how to connect my MacBook Pro to a printer shared by a Windows machine on my network. I have the Windows path to the printer but I don't know how to get Leopard to see the printer. (I tried the Windows tab in the Print and Fax control panel.) Can someone please tell me what is going on?

Answer 1

Okay, some things you need to confirm for me.
What is the workgroup name of the computer sharing the printer?
What is the ip address and subnet mask of the computer sharing the printer?
What is your Mac's ip address and subnet mask?
If your Mac and the PC have the same subnet (usually the first three numbers of the ip address) and the workgroup name is the same, then you should be able to see the share. If not, there is a manual method of connecting to a Windows share.
What you need to do is customise the add printer browser. After selecting to add a printer, control-click next to the More Printers icon to see a menu. Choose Customize Toolbar. Move the Advanced icon to the toolbar. Now click the Advanced icon to see a new menu. Change the top menu to Windows Printing. In the field after smb://, you can enter the computer name or ip address of the sharing computer, followed by a / then the printer share name. For example,
smb://192.168.40.12/Canon
Note that sometimes you have to also use account information in the queue name, especially when the guest account is disabled. In these cases, the queue name would be entered as follows;
smb://username:password@computer_name/printer_sharename
Once you enter the queue name you can then select the printer model. For some models of printers, you cannot use the driver supplied by the vendor. So you have to look at using CUPS based drivers such as those provided by Gutenprint.
HTH
PaHu