Solved How to Keep Firewall ON with Network Printing

[eddiegnz1]

It seems I have to disable my firewall in order to enable printer sharing in my house.
I have one desktop PC hardwired to the printer by USB cable. Then I have a laptop that connects to the router wirelessly. So the wireless laptop is not directly hardwired to the printer but I have it set up to print.

How can I configure my home network so that I can keep my firewall on in the desktoop PC while being able to print from my wireless laptop. The wireless laptop does not require me to turn off the firewall in it.

Laptop is Vista
Desktop is XP
Printer is Hewlet Packard

thank you
Eddie

 

[DiabloBlack]

Need a little more detail. What software firewall product are you using on the desktop? Need to know what port the printer is on. What we need to make sure is is that print sharing is properly set up on the XP desktop. Probably will need a firewall rule for the software firewall on the XP desktop and will need to have the router forward print requests to the printer (XP desktop). Usually if you use port forwarding to another machine on the network, that machine should have a static IP address instead of dynamic.

Now I'm not saying go out and buy another printer but another option would be to purchase a wireless printer in which it will not be dependent on another PC on the network. They support UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and will set themselves up on the router if the router supports UPnP making it much easier to manage on your network.

 

[bogdan]

So you can print with the firewall off?

On desktop/XP: Right-click the Local Area Network or the connection you are using, then click Properties. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings. Click the Exceptions tab and make sure the File and Printer Sharing checkbox is checked.