Sharing of printer

[mukhtiar]

Dear folks I need help in sharing my MFC240C USB printer to be share between my desktop having windows7 and my laptop that also has windows7.

I am new in this please explain in easy way
Thanks

[s0lid]

the best way to share it is through a network hub/switch. Im assuming you have a wireless router buy yourself a "usb to ethernet" device. From there they have instruction how to do it.

[Egren71]

Assuming you have no network connections on you printer, and looking at the specs it doesn't appear to have any. And assuming you only want you use the Computer that the printer is attached to as a print server and the laptop as a client here is how you could do it.
On the PC with printer attached, i am assuming the desktop PC you need to click on Start then on Devices and Printers.
Then in the window that opens Double left click on your printer so that your printers window opens.
In the window that opens Double left click on Customise your printer then on the properties page that pops up Left click on Sharing tab at top of properties page.
On the Sharing properties page Left click on Change Sharing Options then Left click on tick box to the left of Share this printer so that a tick appears in it.
While here you can if you want Either put a share name in the box where it says share name or leave it as the default Brother MFC-240C.
Then Left click on OK at bottom of page. You can close any windows that you have opened on this PC as the printer should now be shared.

If you know what the name of your computer with the printer attached is you can open a command prompt and type in " \\the computer name\the printer share name " and that should install a networked version on the printer on this computer.

If you don't know the name then:-

On the PC without printer, i am assuming the laptop you need to click on Start then on Computer.
Then in the window that pops up you need to Left click on Network in bottom left hand side of window.
Now at top of page it may say "Network discovery is turned off. Network computers and devices are not visible. Click to change"
so what you need to do is click on where it says Click to change and in the box that appears click Turn on network discovery and file sharing.
In the pop up box click on No, make the network that i am connected to a private network.
Your pc with the printer attached should now show up in the window,it will appear by name so hopefully you know what your printer name is.
Double left click on your PC that appears in the window that is your PC attached to the printer then your shared printer should now show up in the window.
If you now Double left click on your printer it should now install a networked version on the printer on this computer.

This should achieve what i think you want.
There are things to be aware of in doing this which are security related i.e. this now makes one if not both of your computers visible on the network where as before they were hopefully both invisible. Also anyone one on your network could now attach to and use your printer.
But as this was not what the original question was about we wont go into that here. I would have difficulty answering the question anyway as i don't have Window7 to test with, but it is something to be aware of.
Also this guide was done mostly from memory as i haven't seen Windows7 for quite a while so some of the steps may not be exactly correct.
So hopefully some of the members of the board who use windows7 can correct any of the steps i have wrong or point out another way to do it.

[tigger001]

Egren71's way is how my setup used to be , also if you need to use the printer on your laptop you must have the desktop switched on.