Win 7 (X64) machine can't access printer on Vista (X86) machine over wireless router

Sorry for the confusion - I'll try to clarify. There are two machines and one printer. The printer is connected by USB cable to the Vista machine. I am trying to print from the Win7 laptop (over the wireless router) to the printer that is USB'd to the Vista machine.

There are 3 user accounts on each machine: my daughter, my wife, and myself. Only my account is password protected. The user name for each of the user accounts is the same on each machine (i.e. my wife's account name is Deborah on both machines).

Password protected sharing is disabled on both machines.

Hope this is clear. . .

Barbarian

I was able to get this resolved and i thought I would pass this along for the benefit of others. After perusing the official Microsoft Win7 support site I ran across a person that had a similar issue. He was trying to grant account owner access (to their own account - not some else's shared files) from the server to the client machine. I believe one machine was Vista with the other XP. His issue was that the only way he could grant account access to the account owner on the client machine was to set up identical password protected accounts for on both machines for each user. His issue was that he did not want to set up a password for each account.

That got me to thinking about my situation. My account (which is password protected) has always worked correctly (I have access to all my folders from either machine and can print using the server's printer) from the client machine. However, none of the other user accounts could be accessed by the account owner when they were on the client machine, nor could they print from the client machine. None of these accounts were password protected. When I created a password protected test account, voila, I now have access to the desktop, user folders and can print from the client machine. I'm not saying all issues are completely resolved but I do consider this to be a significant breakthrough.

In my studies I ran across a very helpful website that describes in great detail the the intricacies of user authentication with Windows. The link is: PChucks Network: File Sharing Under Windows XP / Vista.

I hope this is helpful - I spent far too much time on this to have the solution be some infantile. I wish Microsoft could have made this clear in big bold letters somewhere obvious; "IF YOU WANT ACCESS TO YOUR ACCOUNT ON A CLIENT MACHINE MAKE SURE YOUR ACCOUNT IS SETUP WITH A PASSWORD AND IS MIRRORED ON ALL MACHINES ON YOUR NETWORK". There might be more to it than this but it seems to have worked for me.

Somewhere along the way I must have missed the BIG BOLD STATEMENT . . .

Barbarian

Originally Posted by Trouble

No, don't trash anything, believe it or not you're having better luck then most, at least you can see it. First try this when prompted, if you see an option to choose other user or something like that choose that if not or in either case try using this format machinename\username and then the password, that is
TheVistaDestopMachineName\UsernameThatWorksOnTheVistaDesktop and then the password for that user. Alternately you can try adding the username and password you are using on the Win7 machine to the user accounts on the Vista Desktop. There seems to be some issues with missing passwords on some home networks, if you are not using passwords you may have to take that leap or perhaps turn of password protected sharing

Yep, perhaps you missed it here in my very first response to your initial question

What's weird is that password protected sharing is (and always has been) disabled on both machines. Seems counter intuitive to me . . . however, can't argue with results. Account passwords are required.

Barbarian