Adding a Network Printer

If you are planning to buy a printer soon, then you should definitely consider buying a network printer because prices have recently come down and now you can get a network printer at a nearly same price as an ordinary printer. Now, once you have purchased a network printer, you need to be aware of few things. One thing to be aware of is that to share your network printer on your home network, you firstly need to install a network printer so that all the computers on your network can use it. The advantage of having such a printer is that you will only need one network printer for your entire network and this will ultimately help you save money on office equipment as well as space. Nowadays, the average person has more than one computer and share available resources over a home network. No one wants their house full of unnecessary office equipments. Therefore, we need to use a network printer. For instance, if you have three computers at your home network, you will only need one printer for all of them.

The most important thing that you need to know is how to add a network printer onto your home network because windows users who wish to use and print to a shared network printer will first need to add the printer to Windows whether it be windows XP, vista, or windows 7. The instructions for adding a network printer to windows are comparatively different depending on the version you are using. We will go through all the instructions for adding network printer on windows XP, vista, and windows 7. Let us first consider adding a network onto windows XP. Before beginning with anything, there are few important things that you need to know. For example, to install a network printer, you must know your printer manufacturer, model name, and IP address. You really don’t need to worry too much about these things because you can find this information on your printer. It can be easily found on the printer case. If you want to know the IP address, you can search for it on a label attached to the printer. After recording all the information, you can start with the installation procedure.

Click on the start button and open the control panel. In the control panel, click on printers and faxes, then click on add printer. A new window will then open asking to click next if you wish to continue. Click next to start. Another step is to select local printer attached to this computer. Also, make sure "automatically detect and install" my plug and play printer is not checked. Click on next to proceed further. Now create a new port for your network printer. Select create a new port. You can instead click on the down arrow and then click standard TCP/IP port. Move forward by clicking next. A new "add printer" port wizard will open and click next to continue. Another window that opens will ask you to type the printer IP address in the printers name or IP address field.

As soon as you mention the IP address, the port name will automatically be filled. Remember not to change the port name. Now click next to continue. Windows XP will scan the network to find your printers IP address. Select finish to continue. Move forward by selecting the printer’s manufacturer and model. You will then be prompted to confirm the selected printer driver. Make sure to click on keep existing driver and click next to continue. You will be asked to assign the printer a name. Click yes to continue. In another window, you will be asked to share the network printer. Do not share the network printer and click next to continue. Click on finish button to complete the add printer wizard.

For windows vista and windows 7, you will be asked for few more different options but make sure to read the warning or information each window prompts and then click next to continue. In general, the wizards for Vista and Windows 7 will be pretty similar to the above steps for XP.

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-By Dominic
TAGS: Windows 7 Tips Windows Vista Tips Windows XP Tips

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