Windows Vista laptop can't connect to network printer on home netw

[johnels]

I've brought my work laptop (running Windows Vista Ultimate) home and
connected it to my home network. I can connect to file shares on the other
computers on the home network, but I'm unable to connect to any shared
printers. When I attempt to connect, I get the following message:

Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation could not be completed
(error 0x00000003).

I have tried connecting to shared printers on two different computers (one
running Windows Vista Ultimate, the other running Windows XP Professional),
with identical results.

The other computers on my home network have no difficulty sharing printers
with each other. It's just my work laptop that has this problem.

Could this have something to do with the laptop being joined to a domain?
(My home network is a workgroup, not a domain.) I certainly don't want to
unjoin the domain every time I bring it home, and rejoin when I go back to
the office.

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

If the print driver is included in Vista. Install a local printer adding a
Local Port \\XPMACHINENAME\PRINTSHARENAME and use the Vista driver.

error 3 is path not found

[DJG]

Alan ... Installing the shared printer (attached to a Win 98 machine) as a
local printer as you suggest below works ... The printer shows as "Ready" and
I can print to it vey well until I turn off the Vista pc. Each time I turn
the computer back on, the printer is "offline" and there appears to be
nothing that I can do to get it "online" and "ready". If I delete the printer
and re-install it again as a local printer, it will again work just fine.
But it seems that re-installing the printer each time I turn the computer on
shouldn't be the way to operate.

Any suggestions on getting the shared printer to work without re-installing
it as a local printer every time I log on?

[Tadej]

I have same problems. I use Windows Vista Ultimate and Lexmark Z25 on my
other XP based PC.

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

I do not see a Vista driver for this model. Contact Lexmark and find out if
they will even create on for this OS.

http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/seque...1_0_en,00.html

[Greg]

I haven't even tried networking yet - it won't even print directly from the
laptop to my Lexmark Z25 when set as the Vista default printer and connected
to the USB port on the laptop. It's totally outrageous that Vista cannot
simply use XP drivers. It should be backwards compatible. Things should
become more, not less functional with a new OS! It would be so easy for
Microsoft to write an XP driver emulator but they won't. There isn't even a
generic driver available that might allow you to approximate most of the
printer's functions successfully. Even Windoze 95 had that capability.
Lexmark do not seem to have a Vista driver on their website, which is full
of doublespeak crowing about the printers they DO support with vista
drivers. And why would they? Lexmark won't provide it because they want you
to buy a new one and MS won't provide it because they're too lazy and foist
as much responsibility as possible off onto third parties whenever they can
(which is why we now have to download our own backups for installed OEM
software).

Greg