CredIT Crunch – beat the downturn

Just upgraded my desktop PC to Windows 7 and had no problem setting up a shared printer, in my case Canon IP4500 inkjet. My problem arose when I tried to get an older XP laptop to access the shared printer attached to the Windows 7 desktop PC.

The trouble was down to my Windows 7 desktop PC having  new 64 bit drivers that were not compatible with the older 32 bit XP operating system on my laptop. I could find the printer from the laptop – via Control Panel>Printers>Add Printer>A Network Printer.., but the software drivers were not compatible with my old PC and, to make things worse, my Windows 7 desktop wouldn’t allow me to install the older drivers either.

The solution turned out to be first installing the required printer drivers on the XP laptop as a locally installed (even though it wasn’t!) and then changing the port attached to this new printer to a new network port equivalent to the address of the Windows 7 shared address.

I hope you find the instructions below useful in solving your problem – assuming you found this article because you are experiencing the same problem too!

• Install a local printer BUT don’t automatically detect (remember it isn’t connected!)

• Select the LPT1 port even though we know it’s not connected



• Complete the remainder of the printer model installation by selecting the  correct printer type / model etc. Don’t make it your default printer or print a test page

• You should end up with something like this, except with your printer model



• Now for the magic bit, changing the port used by the recently installed “local” printer to the correct network address of the printer installed on your Windows 7 computer.

• Open Control Panel >Printers and Faxes on your XP machine then right click on the printer you want to change the port on

• Click on the Ports >Local Port> New Port and then enter the network address of you Windows 7 installed and already shared printer as shown below – “computer_name” is the name of YOUR Windows 7 computer and “canon ip4500″ swapped with the name of the shared printer.

Hope this helps you get the problem fixed!