Printer sharing XP and Windows 8

December 26, 2012 7:46 PM

Windows networking woes. Windows 8 laptop will not install the drivers for an HP printer that is attached to an XP desktop. Help!

Both machines are connected to a wireless network. The printer is visible to the Win 8 laptop, and the driver installation starts, but ends with the 0x00000214 error.
Tried a lot to remedy this including setting up a local port and entering the full network name of the printer. The printer is an expensive high speed model, so its not just a matter of buying a new wireless printer.

Anybody had this problem and found solutions to make this work? Help!

posted by queue_strategy to computers & internet (13 answers total)

You don't need a driver if you're accessing the printer on another computer via your LAN.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:02 PM on December 26, 2012

To amplify this: the XP machine has to have a driver, but presumably it does have. The Win8 machine doesn't have to have. When you print from the Win8 machine, the XP machine's driver does the work.

Drivers are only needed for hardware that's directly connected to a computer.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:11 PM on December 26, 2012

That makes sense. But when I try to add the network printer, the "No driver found" error occurs. its looking for the driver on the network and prompts to locate one manually. ???
posted by queue_strategy at 8:37 PM on December 26, 2012

If your Win8 laptop can't use the XP driver, then yes by all means you need a driver. (example)

Is there no driver for Windows 8 from HP? If not, you could try connecting the printer to your Win8 machine via USB and see if Windows update can find something that will work.
posted by wongcorgi at 10:02 PM on December 26, 2012

Wongcorgi - yes, HP has a Win8 driver for the P2015, but when I attempt to install it, it terminates in the 0x00000214 error. Frustrating.
posted by queue_strategy at 6:19 AM on December 27, 2012

Sorry, but yes, Win8 still needs printer drivers when printing over the network. This is because the print job is still rendered locally before being sent to the spooler on the print server (the XP box in this case). Also, if you didn't have the driver you would not be able to select things like duplexing, stapling, etc.

Have you tried this? http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/print_drivers_install_additional.mspx?mfr=true

In order for that to work you will need to have the drivers for Win8 extracted from whatever file you downloaded from the manufacturer. This will be intuitive if it was a zip file, but will still need to be done if it was an .EXE. Some zip programs can so that for you, or the EXE may have a command line switch to extract the contents
posted by dave*p at 6:52 AM on December 27, 2012

More info here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/25/simplifying-printing-in-windows-8.aspx

They are trying to go completely driverless but it requires changes to the printers themselves. As I understand it, the only way it works automagically is if Win8 has drivers for the printer baked into the OS, and if this is a fancy high end one it may not.
posted by dave*p at 7:03 AM on December 27, 2012

HP's installers are horrible and when they break they break hard.

The most common cause I've seen for the scenario you describe is that the machine hosting the printer is running a 32-bit Windows and has only 32-bit printer drivers installed, while the machine attempting to connect is running a 64-bit Windows and therefore needs a 64-bit printer driver.

There are various ways to work around this. What I've generally found to be the path of least resistance is this: physically unplug the printer from the XP box, connect it directly (via USB) to the Windows 8 box, and install it on Windows 8 as a local printer. Having done that, move it back to the XP box. On the Win8 box, bring up its Printer Properties sheet and change its port from USB001: or similar to a new port with a name you type in as \\name-of-xp-box\name-of-printer-share (where name-of-printer-share might be the name you used under "share this printer" on the XP box - try this first - or might be the printer's display name as listed on the XP box under Printers and Faxes).

If you're very lucky, and the gods of HP are smiling upon you which they almost never do, and you've sacrificed the exactly appropriate quantity of goats and you're holding your mouth just right, you may be able to avoid the need for all the above by installing an additional driver (specifically, the 64-bit one) on the XP box using that option in the printer's property sheet. But don't count on it. HP installers really are appalling.
posted by flabdablet at 7:08 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

1- Are you sure sharing works on the XP machine? Have you successfully printed from a networked machine to it? Make sure that works before anything else.

2- Try what flabdablet recommends.

3- If that gets weird, try using the laserjet 4000 driver on the Windows 8 machine. Install it locally, and then create a new port that points to the windows xp share.

4- Try using the laserjet 4000 driver on both machines. It is possible that HP's driver for the USB-only version of that printer does not allow sharing. They used to do that with cheaper printers, not sure if they still do.
posted by gjc at 7:13 AM on December 27, 2012

Another installer gotcha: every NT-based version of Windows (NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8) has support for the so-called Mode 3 printer driver framework, so any printer driver built for XP should Just Work on Vista/7/8 provided the CPU architecture (32-bit/64-bit) matches. Lots of complaints about unavailability of printer drivers for Vista got worked around simply by running the XP driver installer in XP compatibility mode - typically it was the installer, rather than the driver, that was the only source of incompatibility.

So if you want to pursue the "additional drivers" line, which is theoretically the Right Thing even if it doesn't always work, a 64-bit driver for XP should be all you need. Once that's in place, you shouldn't need to run any printer installer code at all on the Win8 side; simply connecting to the shared printer should make Win8 grab a working 64-bit driver quietly over the network. You might see a UAC prompt asking you to confirm installation of that.
posted by flabdablet at 7:28 AM on December 27, 2012

I appreciate all of the advice and will experiment with the driver installations when back at my sister's house. I have a good feeling that this will eventually work and will report back my progress. Thanks to all!
posted by queue_strategy at 8:43 PM on December 28, 2012

If trying the "additional drivers" route, don't bother re-running HP's driver installer on the XP box and looking for some kind of "install 64-bit driver" option, because you won't find one. Depending what the installer already did in the process of installing the existing 32-bit driver, you might be lucky enough to find a folder called x64 or amd64 tucked away somewhere under Program Files\HP or Program Files\Hewlett Packard, inside which might be an INF file for your printer. If that's there, it will be what you want to point the printer properties->Install Additional Drivers file chooser at.

If it's not there, and HP's installers being what they are there's a fair chance it won't be, the chances of you being able to find an installer for the driver you need that actually works on the OS where the driver needs to be installed are slim to none, and you'd be better off pursuing the cheat's way I outlined earlier (installing the printer directly on Win8 as a USB printer, then changing the port to point to a network share).

The downside of the cheat's way is that it will need to be repeated for every 64-bit Win8 box that ever needs to connect to that printer, because the print server never will gain the ability to serve up the necessary 64-bit driver on request. The upside is that you'll probably actually be able to make it work.
posted by flabdablet at 12:12 AM on December 29, 2012

Oh, yeah: the other upside is that the shared printer will become immediately available to all users on the Win8 box, because Win8 will be treating it like a local printer as opposed to a printer connection; printer connections are all handled per-user.
posted by flabdablet at 1:28 AM on December 29, 2012