Welcome to Just Ask Matt! Today, Zack writes:

All right, this has me confused. Matt, I have tried everything to get this printer sharing to work between XP and 98. The 98 machines seems to see the printer attached to the XP machine. I have the drivers installed and the printer is showing up as the default printer on the 98 machine. But I swear, every time I go to print something from the 98 machine, it just sits there and spools the document! What am I doing wrong? This should be easy!

I’ll bet you money that I can resolve this for you with little more than some carefully placed reboots. First off, let’s start over with the 98 machine. Uninstall the network printer. Now reboot the XP machine and then the 98 machine. (This may seem like overkill, but it does help in more cases that you would ever believe)

After you have done this, reinstall the network printer on the 98 machine. Now for the key move - reboot the 98 machine. Once this process has taken place, I am willing to bet you dollars to donuts that you will be able to print with little or no trouble at all. Just remember with network printing, you may have to wait for a minute or two before the printer catches up with the command on the other machine. Hope this helps!

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!”