How to Make a Windows Computer a Print Server (3 Steps)

By Ryan K Oylear

i dun cat - printer image by Maria Brzostowska from Fotolia.com

In most households, there is either one computer with a printer connected to it, or nearly every computer has a printer connected to it. Neither solution is economical, and the first solution is problematic if someone else is using the computer at the time. Printers that have built in networking capability are expensive, as are "print servers" which allow the use of USB and parallel type printers to become networked printers. Luckily there is an easy and cheap way to deal with this conundrum.

Step 1

Bring up the printer properties dialog on the computer with the printer connected to it. Do this by clicking on "Start," then selecting "Control Panel," then "Printers and Faxes," finally right-clicking on the installed printer in the drop-down list, and clicking on "Sharing..."

Step 2

Click the radio button next to "Share this printer" and give the printer a name to display to all networked computers. If any of the other computers on the network use a different version of Windows, such as 98, ME, 2K, NT4, or the 64 bit variants of XP, then download the appropriate printer driver packs for those operating systems and extract the files to a folder on the desktop or somewhere else that will be easy for you to find.

Step 3

Click the "Additional Drivers..." button and check the boxes next to the other Windows versions that are used in the home. Click "OK" and a dialog will pop up asking for the drivers for each checked Windows version in turn. When this is complete, click "OK" on the printer properties dialog to close it. The printer will now appear on the network to all computers connected. When the printer is first used, the remote Windows operating system will automatically download the appropriate drivers for the printer and install them, and then proceed to print.

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