I sold 2 x Dell SFF PCs to a client in December 2010 with Win 7 Pro. They have a Brother Fax / Laser Printer that is locally attached via USB to PC #2. It is shared. I was able to easily add it to PC #1 in the normal manner via the Printers control panel (Add a Network printer). Printing works fine. However, whenever either of the PCs is restarted, the shared printer is lost and has to be re-added to PC #1. Both PCs are using manual IP addressing via TCP/IP v4 (so the address of each PC remains constant at all times), both on the computers themselves and via the 4-port LAN ADSL router they are connected through (so I've set the ADSL Router to manual IP addressing). Why is this happening? How can it be resolved? My home network has 2 Vista PCs sharing 3 different printers, and I've never seen this problem with them (ditto when the main PC in that network was running XP and the other Vista).

Hi, Have you tried to add the printer manually in the Device and Printer console? If not, please try it and specify the driver locally. This issue may be caused by the driver is not fully compatible with Windows 7. Also, make sure print spooler service and the dependency service for print spooler services is set to automatic and started. The following link for your reference. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/2c055ac8-b79e-4f30-a53d-798e69ed8d2f/ Thanks.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.

I sold 2 x Dell SFF PCs to a client in December 2010 with Win 7 Pro. They have a Brother Fax / Laser Printer that is locally attached via USB to PC #2. It is shared. I was able to easily add it to PC #1 in the normal manner via the Printers control panel (Add a Network printer). Printing works fine. However, whenever either of the PCs is restarted, the shared printer is lost and has to be re-added to PC #1. Both PCs are using manual IP addressing via TCP/IP v4 (so the address of each PC remains constant at all times), both on the computers themselves and via the 4-port LAN ADSL router they are connected through (so I've set the ADSL Router to manual IP addressing). Why is this happening? How can it be resolved? My home network has 2 Vista PCs sharing 3 different printers, and I've never seen this problem with them (ditto when the main PC in that network was running XP and the other Vista). Mind to share how you share out the printer? If you could provide the exact make & model of the printer, that would helps.