I have a wireless network, and am typing wirelessly from my laptop right now. However, my computer is attached to my PC upstairs. I transfer files to print. How can I change to wireless printing? I tried to get help, but my local Best Buy said they sold the service, and would give it away for nothing.
Assuming it’s a standard XP wireless home network go to the PC physically attached to the printer and go to Control Panel>Printer & Faxes> Specific printer you wish to network - right click on the printer a small applet comes up - choose “Sharing” then enable sharing. This places the Pinter as an accessible device on the network.
Then go the wireless PC and Control Panel>Printer & Faxes - right click in the white space > choose Add Printer and then Networked Printer >Browse for printer and the networked printer should be available to be added.
If XP does not have the drivers for the printer built in you may need to have the disk or directory with the print drivers available at this point for the wireless PC.
astro’s solution works fine if you don’t mind having the upstairs PC powered up whenever you want to print.
I have friends who just recently wanted to do the same as the OP; their desktop PC (and printer and DSL wireless router) are in their back room, which gets cold in winter, and they wanted to be able to fire up the laptop somewhere else in the house and print out Web pages, e-mails, etc during the day without having to go and turn the office PC on.
I installed a print server, hooked it up to the router with a network cable (not supplied with the model I linked to), and they can now print from either PC over the network. As astro mentioned, both computers will need to have the correct printer drivers loaded. The printer stays powered up, but on “standby”, and wakes up whenever a print job comes its way. My friends still have to brave the cold of the office to actually pick up the hard copy, but that’s less of a problem for them apparently.
If your network router and printer are not physically close to each other, you can use a wireless print server such as this.
Note: the above assumes that the printer uses a USB interface. Print servers also exist for Centronics-type interfaces, but they’re harder to find. Some printers have a network adapter already installed, in which case the print server isn’t needed, but that tends only to be true for the more expensive models.