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chrisfixit

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Cannot connect network printers to W7 laptop.

Client has two PCs running XP pro in her office and to one of these there are two printers atached,
a Panasonic DP-1510P MFD and an HP Laserjet 1320 .

She now has a laptop running W7 HP and wantted to access the files and printers on the PCs.

I changed the workgroup on the laptop to match that of the PCs which were already networked and all is well with the file sharing.

BUT when I tried to add the printers in W7 it found them OK but couldn't locate drivers..

I downloaded the drivers but when prompted to install them from the Add Printer wizard I get two different errors - for the Panasonic I get 0x0000214 'cannot connect to printer' .

The laserjet comes with an install application and when I run that I get 0x0000007e 'cannot open Add Printer'

Any ideas please?
Avatar of Brad Sims
Brad Sims
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Have you checked the Firewall settings in W7?

Also, to rule out driver issues (if it is feasible of course) - you could directly connect each printer and add it that way.  This way you could be sure it is not just an issue with the drivers and we can focus strictly on the networking part.
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chrisfixit

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Good idea, I'll install the printers directly on the laptop later today and see if that works.
Install once again on these XP machine and when prompted install additional drivers (for W7)
Do not install on laptop as it will not work (only if you print from laptop with printer attachet to it).
Sorry, don't understand.. do you mean uninstall them from the XP PC and re-install them?
I did install the Laserjet directly on the laptop and Windows 7 automatically downloaded and installed the drivers - it was installed as LASERJET 1320 PCL 5.

I then connected the printer to the PC again and tried installing it as a network printer - it didn't find the drivers it had already installed and said it couldn't find suitable drivers - but it was looking for PCL 6 not PCL 5.

So I downloaded the PCL 6 drivers from HP, extracted them from the .exe and re-ran the wizard to add it as a network printer and when requested I pointed it to the PCL 6 .inf . It then threw the same error 0x00000214 'cannot connect to printer;.

I thought these network problems were a thing of the past with W7 :-(

Yes,that's what I mean ....
Did you check your FW settings yet?  If you can see the printers this may be part of the issue.
On the XP machines, go to the sharing tab. On the bottom of the screen there is an "Additional Drivers" button. Click there and provide the Windows 7 drivers.

Now try and add the printers on the windows 7 laptop.
In order to add the drivers you have to check one of the boxes above specifying an operating system - W7 (or Vista) aren't there and checking anither box and trying to add drivers doesn't work.

I cannot understand what/where/why it is looking for drivers that already exist on the laptop.

I booted up an old XP PC at home and installed  a Canon printer I had lying around.

I then connected it to my Workgroup on which I have a PC running W7 64-bit and two laptops running W7 32-bit.

I installed the Canon on both laptops as a network printer with no problems - W7 copied/downloaded drivers and the Canon was up and running on the network in 10 minutes.

Something odd is happening with the office setup. :-)
Have you checked the firewall settings on the PC that the printer is hooked to?
Yes, and I turned off firewalls and anti-virus. No difference.

I would like to know what exactly Windows 7 does when I try and add the printer.. why doesn't it use the already installed driver.. or does it use a different driver to print to the same printer over the network to the one it uses to ptinr to a local printer?

I've never seen 'Network printer drivers' anywhere! .
First:
Make sure password (for logging in,exist on all of the concerned machines.
Second:
Make sure the printers are shared (on the XP machines).
Third:Make sure no firewalls on none of the machines are blocking the connection.
Fifth :
Make sure your W7 settings (Advanced file sharing) are like the one on the picture (pic).

For the drivers :
Do not install the printer drivers running printer setup on W7.
Use Start>Devices&Printers>Add network printer and just point to the drivers when promptet.
Another option is to reinstall drivers on XP and when prompted install 'additional drivers'.
Tell me now how far did you get?

18.1.png
OK, there is no password on the XP machine - but file sharing works perfectly - the permissions are set as you show above. I disabled both Firewalls and anti-virus.

The printers are shared -> when I try and add additional drivers the option is grayed out until I select an OS from the list of check-boxes above - this list has Windows NT, 2000, XP 64.. etc but no W7 or Vista option.

I tried XP64 but it refused to unstall the W7 drivers.
Are xp machines X64 or W7 too ???
XP 32bit SP3 Greek.
When you hit START (orb) > Devices & Printers > Add a printer > Add a network printer ....
Windows 7 then begins  searching for network printers.
Do you see your printers in the list after windows finishes (or during)  the search ?
yes, they show up in a couple of seconds - then when I select the Laserjet it goes off into Windows Update for a minute or so, then says it cannot find a driver.. I then get the option to point to a driver and when I do that it throws the 214 error.

I can't understand how it can't find a driver when it will find it if I attach the printer to the laptop itself.

'if I attach the printer to the laptop itself' ?
if you attach the printer to laptop then you run the setup
of the printer drivers (just make sure you are using the right ones ).
Ok, if I unplug the printer from the PC and connect it to the laptop, Windows 7 installs the drivers automatically and it works perfectly.

The printer works perfectly on the XP PC as well.

So the Windows 7 drivers exist and work, as do the XP.

So when I say 'Add printer' -> Network Printer it finds the printer .. then I select it and click 'next' and it says Windows Update is searching for drivers and after a couple of minutes says 'cannot find drivers' if you have etc etc. and then gives me the option to supply a driver.

I have backed up the drivers it installed when I connected the printer to the laptop so I point it to that driver - then it gives me a 214.
Alright.  I did some research @ Microsoft Technet, and both drivers have to be installed on the host machine.  You cannot do this since your option is grayed out.

1.  Try the manual method listed in the the posts here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/e2a7a390-421d-4015-9293-b5e107b1b563/

2.  What is the model of the machine the printer is hooked to?
I don't know but it seems to me  you are messing something with the drivers here....
When the windows can not find the drivers you are given the option to supply them yourself.
Which means you point to where the setup CD of the printer is.
Now it is not that simple as you might think....
Windows uses driver that it assumes is a network driver.The one on the local machine does not count.
If you have just a setup.exe (for printer) then you must extract that exe to a folder.
Use Winrar.
Once you extract the setup exe,drivers should be found in your folder.
So tell W7 to look for drivers in that folder...
I did! I backed up the driver that Windows 7 itself installed automatically to the laptop and pointed ot to that folder.

I also downloaded the PCL 5 and x64 PCL 6 drivers from HP's website and extracted the drivers with 7-zip.

The x64 exe contained a number of different drivers and I opened each .inf to find the one that contained the 1320 reference.

It STILL doesn't work.
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