What is the secret of printing to a Win 7 box? I have 3 xp machines and 1 win 7 box. The win7 box currently has an HP 1022 hooked up to one of its usb ports. Win7 can print to the 1022 just fine. On the xp boxes, it's a different story. When I initially add the printer to the xp boxes it seems to go ok. But when I select properties for the printer I get a message that the driver is not installed. I install the driver. Then try to send a test print. Sending a test print to this printer hanging off the win7 box causes a crash ( Spooler SubSystem App has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience ). On all 3 xp boxes. I take this printer and hang it off a xp box, share it out, and all 3 xp boxes will print to it. The win7 box was initially set to home network, but is now set to "Work". I have been through the sharing options a dozen times, researched the internet at large and can find no relief. I also want to know if Windows Firewall HAS to be on for network printing to work? I noticed that I cannot even share something without the firewall on or windows pops some error. So I left win firewall on, and same explorer crash on the xp boxes when trying to print to the win7 box. I went into the firewall settings and set everything to ALLOW and same error on the xp boxes. Then I went into the advanced firewall rules and set everything having to do with printing to allow. Still no change. Any ideas? Also, how do you tell win7 not to install any drivers to a box connecting to it for printing?

Ok, it's working. Looks like it is a driver problem. Found some inspiration here: http://superuser.com/questions/23703/installing-additional-printer-drivers-x86-on-windows-7-x64 I deleted printers and drivers off of all computers concerned. I added the 1022 back to the win7 box and shared it. Instead of using the additional drivers button on the printer properties window I added them through the server properties button and un checked the x64 line and checked only the x86 line. Clicked next, added the 1022 32-bit xp driver. Done. Then on a XP box did the add printer to LPT1, add the xp driver and finish. Create a new port \\%compname%\1022, finish. Then alter the properties of the printer so that it prints to the new port I just added. However, once I did that and got a successful print, I deleted the printer from 1 of the xp boxes, and tried to add network printer through the wizard and was met with the same problems as I originally had. It seems like win7 is having a problem deciding which driver to hand to 32 bit xp boxes attaching to its printer. Also found out that XP 64-bit will print to this shared printer w/o a problem.