I have a problem losing the connection of shared printers in my home network (and thus being unable to print from a shared printer). Here’s my setup: I have a home network with my principal computer (a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop) connected via Ethernet to a 2Wire home gateway (model 3800HGV-B). Two printers (an HP Laserjet 3500t and a Dell color laser printer) are connected to the Inspiron desktop via USB. Two remote laptops (both Dell, an XPS M1530 laptop and a Dell XPS Studio) are a part of the home network and are connected wirelessly to the 2Wire gateway (the two laptops share the two printers via printer sharing on the network). Note: this problem only affects the M1530 laptop; the Studio works fine. Everytime I boot up the M1530 laptop it will have lost its shared connection to the printers, which will be shown as “offline” and “not ready” (I’m running Windows 7 Home Premium on all 3 machines), and the icons for the printers under “Devices and Printers” will have been “grayed out” and are “Offline.” The only way I can restore the sharing connection and print from the M1530 is to reinstall the printers. However, the printers remain installed and available for printing from the laptop only until I reboot the laptop, at which time the sharing connections are again lost. This (losing the sharing connection) happens every single time the laptop is booted up, either from a startup or a reboot. The other laptop, the Studio (also running Windows 7) doesn’t have this problem. It “sees” the shared network printers which are available for printing and doesn’t lose its shared connection. I’m using Norton 360 on all three computers, but the same problem arises even after I disable Norton 360. I’ve also blown away all of my printer drivers and reinstalled each one of them. If you have any advice or suggestions for me, please give them to me. Bob Atlanta, GA

Please temporarily remove Norton and check if the issue persists. If the issue still occurs, please follow the steps in the FAQ to re-add the shared printers. Forum FAQ:How to manually add a printer with shipped driverPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Arthur, thanks for the advice. I'm out of town for the Holidays and will follow your suggestions after I return and then report back to the Forum. I'm curious, however. What is the difference in your advice to "manually add a printer" and my adding a printer via the Start/Devices and Printers/Add a Printer route. Is it the fact that I "browse" for a printer and your advice is to add a printer via a new port? Happy New Year to all. BobBob Grout

The difference is that In my suggest we create a local port for the printer and then foward it to TCP port.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.