▷ Network printer sharing windows 10

If you have a network mounted in your home or several computers and you want to print something if you need to connect the printer to each computer, we teach you how to be able to share a printer on a network in Windows 10. With the procedure that you will see below you will be able to print all your documents from any equipment connected to your router or switch.

Index of contents

This method is used by practically all companies or office cabinets. In this way they have a fully centralized printer and access for all equipment. And we are going to do just the same.

Preparations

As essential preparations what we will have to do is have the computers connected to the same network. In other words, these devices must be connected either via wifi or via an ethernet cable to a switch or router.

In addition, the printer must be connected to one of the computers via USB and with the correctly installed drivers. Normally, Windows install these drivers automatically, although sometimes it will be necessary to download them from the manufacturer's page.

Know the IP of the computer that has the printer connected

To make sure that there is communication between the main computer and the clients for the printer, what we are going to do is use the “ ping ” command, but first we must know the IP address of the main computer.

To do this, press the key combination " Windows + R " to open the Run tool. Type " CMD " and press Enter.

Now we must write the following command: " ipconfig "

We must identify the connection whose title is " Ethernet Adapter Ethernet ". This will be the physical connection of the network cable to our PC. If our equipment is connected via Wi-Fi, the title will be " Wireless LAN Adapter"

In any case, we are interested in the line " IPv4 address ". We write down this IP for later

Ping

Now we must go to the other computer connected to the network and open this command terminal in the same way

We write " ping " That is, the IP that we saw earlier. For example, "ping 192.168.2.101" in our case

If the responses of the sent packets are shown as seen in the image, it is because the connection is correctly established. Otherwise, check that you have entered the IP address correctly or that your device is connected to the network.

We recommend that whenever you are in a home network you have the network configured as a private type, to facilitate intercom communication of the equipment.

To do this visit our tutorial:

Once the correct connection is verified, we begin with the process

Enable network and share discovery

If we have never used our team to share files, the most normal thing is that you have this option disabled by default. We must do the following:

We enter the file explorer and go to the " network " directory. We will get the message from the image below. Click on " OK " We click on the warning that appears at the top of the window and choose " Activate network detection and file sharing "

A window appears in which we have two options. We recommend choosing the first one to make our private one. This will allow us to see files on our local network and to be visible on it, but not in a case of connecting to a public network such as a bar.

Network printer sharing on Windows 10

On the computer that has the printer physically connected we will do the following:

We go to the start menu and write Control Panel to access it. Press Enter on the search result. Once inside, locate the icon or link " View devices and printers "

Once inside this window what we will have to do is locate our printer in the corresponding section. The name may vary depending on what sea and printer model we have. Right-click on it and choose " Printer Properties "

Now in the new window that opens, we go to the " Share " tab and activate the " Share this printer " option and click on " OK"

Now we will have the shared printer on the network. We will notice that there is an indicator in the icon of this one denoting the property of shared

It is time to go to the computer that will use the shared printer

In this team we can do two different procedures to identify the printer on the network.

From the control panel

We must go to the section " see devices and printers " and click on the top where it says " Add a printer." A wizard will open. We must click on " the printer I want is not in the list "

In the next window we will have several options available. The ones we recommend using are one of the first three:

My printer is a little old. Help me find it: with this option a complete scan will be made to the network in search of the printer Select a shared printer by name: This is the option that we are going to use, since we have the shared printer and we know the IP address of the computer main Add a printer using a TCP / IP address or hostname - This is similar to the previous option, but it may cause more problems.

In the window that opens, we will have to put the IP address of the main computer in the following way: “\\ ”

This will show the resources that are shared on the computer. The printer should be

We select it and click on " select ". After accepting the last window, the printer will already appear in our list of devices

From the network folder

We can also do the process from the network folder of the guest computer. In this case Windows 10 usually gives enough problems when it comes to detecting other computers on the network to make them visible.

If you want to know how to connect two computers in a network and make them look correctly visit our next tutorial:

In any case, it will not be necessary to do the above procedure either.

Open the Windows folder explorer and go to the " Network " section

If we do not see the main computer in the list that appears, at the top of the address bar, we put the IP of the main computer “\\ In the same way as in the previous case, if it is the first time that we connect, we will be asked for the username and password of the main computer.

In case the main computer user does not have a password, it will give an authentication error. To solve this visit the tutorial of connecting two computers in network

After the procedure, we select the printer from the list of shared resources and it will automatically be installed.

We will already have the printer installed correctly.

Process in Windows 7

If we have a Windows 7 computer, the procedure will be quite similar.

We must go to the control panel in the window " Printer devices " We also click on " add a printer "

Click on " add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer " Again click on the option " The desired printer is not ready " In this case we will choose the same option as in the previous case since it is the one that gives the best results