Printer sharing between xp sp2 and vista home premium.

My file sharing works fine. I have a desktop with xp home and a laptop with
vista. My printer is a lexmark 1270 all in one. If I connect it to either
computer it prints fine. When I connect it to my pc running xp and try to
print to it from my pc running vista I receive an error that tells me that
vista needs to install the driver. When I try to install the driver I get
another error that tells me "Windows cannot connect to the printer. The
specified print monitor is unknown."

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Please see:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/net.../vista_fp.mspx

I had already tried everything that was mentioned in the links that you
posted and none of them worked. I had spent countless hours searching for a
solution to the problem and today I finally decide to give Network Magic a
try and belive it or not it worked. You can download the free version at
www.networkmagic.com. I know that it says that it is a 30 day trial but for
some reason you can continue to use it after the 30 days are up. To use
Network Magic you have to download and install it on all of the computers on
your network. The next step is to directly connect and install the printer on
the pc that is running vista. Once that is done, you then reconnect the
printer to the pc that is running XP, you then open Network Magic and
set it up your printer from there.

Hello all! I too am having the dreaded Print Monitor is unknown problem. My
Vista laptop can see the HP Photosmart C3180 on my XP Desktop, but it cannot
connect due to the Print Monitor error. I've tried installing the vista
drivers for the printer on this computer, but it still does not work.

I am currently trying the Network Magic solution, but I was wondering- Is
there any solution out there that doesn't involve third party software? I'm
sure there must be a way to fix this if a program is able to...

Wow, after doing a simple web search for this problem I found a quick fix.
Apparantly it has to do with disabling the User Access Control. All you have
to do is re-enable it, install the printer, then disable it again.

Stuuuupid vista, I suppose. I'd love to understand why that would make a
difference...

[fts]

THANK YOU, Hikari07. I had spent hours trying to figure out why the drivers didn't install on Vista for my network printers. I have a Xerox XD100 laser and a HP Photosmart 7350 installed on an XP2 PC. Someone gave my wife a Vista laptop (yuk, I'd never have chosen Vista myself). So I needed to install the printers as network printers under Vista. After clicking to install a new network printer, when I clicked to accept to install the driver, the whole screen simply dimmed, waited 1-2 minutes and then returned to the printer config without a message; no printer installed. I was tearing my hair out in desperation. I did as you said: Went to config - Network and File Sharing Center. Enabled password protection. Installed the printers without a hint. Test printed ok. Re-disabled password protection. Re-test-printed ok. Of course, Microbrain's documentation was as useless as nearly always. Why such a brain damaged design in Vista? The Mac commercials are 100% right.

Okay - why not head to the nearest "Apple" store? Keep in mind that like
Ivory soap (99.9% pure) cause of majority of problems "exists between the
keyboard and chair"!!

If the printers are connected to the XP computer- In Vista select add
printer - select network printer - Vista will search and find the XP
printers (assuming they are shared) - in most cases since Vista will print
via the XP computer drivers on Vista not required - if they are - Vista will
"copy" drivers or request driver disk.