Ok, I’m running XP home and pro here and my parents are running XP pro at their place. They have a printer and I don’t. I know there are some remote control features in XP that I haven’t messed around with too much, will anything like that allow me to print on their printer?
It seems like I remember doing it in Win98 just by running someone’s ip address but I don’t think you can do that in XP (or is it that you can’t do it because of NTFS?)
Any help would be appreciated, thanks :).
If they have broadband with a router and a printer with an ethernet connection, then yes you can do it with any operating system. I once accidently had people printing over the internet to a printer that was 3 feet away. It took a very long time to print going out over Road Runner and coming back through the dual T1s.
If they don’t have broadband and a router and a network printer, it may be possible to to it by setting up a VPN. I have never done that.
We both have broadband and I have a router but they don’t.
Couldn’t you just send them whatever it is you need to print, and have them do it for you?
I’ve got it setup that way at work, but it was long enough ago that I can’t remember the specifics. I can look when I go back in Tuesday, if noone has answered by then. I don’t have XP at home.
Enabling file and print sharing over your internet connection is an invitation for hackers. I wouldn’t recommend doing it. I’d go with a VPN.
Normally yes, but in this case they don’t have the [expensive] software required to read this particular file format.
e_c_g: My router is also a NAT. I was under the impression that you couldn’t VPN from behind a NAT. Am I wrong?
Normally yes, but in this case they don’t have the [expensive] software required to read this particular file format.
e_c_g: My router is also a NAT. I was under the impression that you couldn’t VPN from behind a NAT. Am I wrong?
Any tips on how to VPN peer-to-peer? I tried it earlier but it asked me for a username and password. My parents don’t have any passwords on their computer but none of the usernames worked with blank passwords so I’m not quite sure what it’s asking for here. Is there a howto somewhere on the net? The one at microsoft.com is painfully brief.
Sorry, my setup won’t help you. 
Well I got the VPN set up but I’m kind of lost regarding how exactly to use it. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to print or find any documentation on the internet about it.
You could try getting a copy of the printer driver, printing to file, emailing that, and they can send that to the printer.
I don’t know how this works in XP, but it was possible in DOS.
(Publishing your printer to the internet would give me heebie-jeebies - can XP home even require a password? OTOH, if it’s just for an hour and you turn it off afterwards, personally I’d risk it.)
Have you tried something like Jaws pdf creator? I got mine free on a magazine CD (not current version) but I don’t think it was too expensive anyway. Very easy to use - just set it up as a printer and print to it from any application.