[jmlee]

I have a problem printing from Word on a Vista laptop to a network printer (Brother MFC-215c) that is connected to a XP machine. Bold text in large font is garbled, it comes out as squares instead of letters. I have the feeling that the problem has something to do with the printer drivers that is automatically installed from the XP machine. But I cannot find a way to install Vista drivers on the Vista machine.

Does anybody know what to do?

The Vista machine is a ThinkPad T61 running Vista Business, the XP machine is a Dell machine running XP Service Pack 2.

[DaveA]

Per http://www.brother.com/E-ftp/windowsvista/europe.html the built in drivers should work.

You might want to remove the cirrent driver and try again.

[jmlee]

I have tried doing that, the driver on the XP-machine is the newest available XP driver. I cannot find a way to install a Vista driver on the Vista-machine. When I create the network printer on the Vista-machine, it connects to the XP-machine, and imports the drivers from the XP-machine. I cannot find a way to replace the drivers on the Vista machine with Vista drivers.

[DaveA]

Check on the laptop ans see what the default printer is?
And when printing are you sure that you are sending the print job to the Brothers printer?

[golddust]

Originally Posted by jmlee

I have tried doing that, the driver on the XP-machine is the newest available XP driver. I cannot find a way to install a Vista driver on the Vista-machine. When I create the network printer on the Vista-machine, it connects to the XP-machine, and imports the drivers from the XP-machine. I cannot find a way to replace the drivers on the Vista machine with Vista drivers.

When you go through "Add a Printer" you should get a menu of printers to install. Vista has the drivers for a large number of printers. I used it to install the driver for my HP Officjet v40 on my daughter's machine (and later mine) - it wouldn't install with the disc. Originally, it was set up with Vista on my daughter's machine and XP on mine and my husband's machines with the printer hooked up to mine. It worked great. I now have a new computer with vista and only hubby is communicating with xp, but we aren't having any problems.

[jmlee]

Since it is a network printer, I can only point out witch printer I want to connect to on the network. The driver are supplied from the machine the printer actually is connected to, and that is unfortunately an XP machine. I can’t figure out how to change the driver on the vista machine to a native driver.
It works to a certain point. I can print the test page, and that is ok. But when I print a bit more complicated documents the trouble appears. As an example large bold letters won’t print.

[wmf]

I too am having the very same problem. I have a Dell Inspiron running Vista and I'm trying to print word documents to a network printer (Brother HL-1440..that printer is not on a USB port) running on a Dell desktop. My documents are unreadable. When I install the printer, it connects me to the Brother printer with no option for changing the printer driver. Have you (or anyone) else gotten past this problem? Thanks.

[peterh40]

You have a few options:
1. Install the printer on the Vista machine and connect the XP machines to the printer on the Vista machines.
2. Upgrade the XP machines to Vista.
3. Make the printer a network printer so that PCs will use their own drivers and not a shared printer drivers.
4. By a seperate printer for the XP machines.
5. Copy the files to the XP machine and print them from XP PC.
6. Install new fonts on the XP PC.
7. Update the printer driver to use Postscript only and not PCL or other language.

[wmf]

Thanks for the advice...it looks like option 3 (making the printer a network printer) is the only realistic option for me (at this point). I'm not sure how to make that printer a network printer though. I also have a Epson CX3810 printer (USB). I haven't tried printing to that yet, can I assume I'll have "similar" problems?

[jmlee]

The "solution" I chose, was to buy a new printer with a built-in network card. And that works very well, except for the momentary pain in my wallet...

[peterh40]

For printers with no network card (like a lot of laser printers), you can by a Print Server box (or JetDirect box), connect the printer to the box and the box to the printer.

[1wiggy1]

had the same problem found this and it works

installing a Network Printer in Vista:

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1) Connect the printer to the Vista "client" PC, as though it were to be used with that computer, and install it. This ensures that it has all the necessary software/drivers on board.

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2) Reconnect it to the "host" PC and, in its Properties, set it as "shared". Make a note of both the host PC's "Computer Name" and the printer's "Share Name".

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3) In the Vista "client" PC, launch the "Add a Printer" wizard and select the "Add a local printer" option. This automatically opens a new dialog box in which to select the Port.

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4) Click the "Create a new port" radio button and leave the drop-down menu options on the default of "Local Port". Click Next.

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5) A small box opens in which to enter the Port Name. Type in the path to the "shared" printer in the host PC using the format \\computername\sharename where computername and sharename are the details you noted in (2) above.

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6) Select the Printer driver from the list provided, which should include the driver you originally installed, otherwise use the "Have Disk" button to install the correct Vista driver if it is not in the list. It is essential that a Vista-compatible driver for your printer is used. Click Next.

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7) Give the printer a name and choose whether to set it as the default. Click Next.

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8) Print a test page to verify functionality and then click Finish.

[nmoore6676]

If you buy a third party network print server, be sure that the one you buy is compatible with the printer you intend to sue it with. HP is most compatible and Lexmark the least in my experience.

[mpc]

After struggling with getting my HP7350 to print correctly, I read your post and it worked flawlessly.

If you need to print to a XP-hosted networked printer from a Vista machine, and have a HP7350 attached to your XP host, follow wiggy's post and it will work!

[superconfused]

THANK YOU!!!! 1wiggy1
you saved my butt. I needed the printer connected before the end of the week. My HP Deskjet 5440 would not corporate with me and having literally no background with Vista I was baffled had it been a window xp to window xp set up i would have do it in less than an hr. thanks to you i can now print my homework.