Printer Sharing

What is Printer Sharing?

Print from any PC in OneCare circle to any printer attached to a PC in the same circle

If you have a USB printer attached to any PC in your OneCare circle, OneCare automatically sets up connection to that printer from all other PCs in the same circle. Now you don't need to email files to the computer with printer. You can just "print" from any application on any PC and just print to printer directly.

Supported Environment

* Our goal is to support most printers that are connected to a OneCare PC via a USB cable.
* Both PC are part of same OneCare Circle and connected to same router
For more details see PrinterSharingSystemRequirements

What should I expect if my environment fits the requirements described above?

Once both machines see each other on the network, they will authenticate each other via OneCare infrastructure and initiate printer sharing automatically.
* You will not see any change on the host, other than if you visited Windows Control Panel applet for Printers (Start>Control Panel>Printers), you will notice that printer has been shared and if you right click, there would be OneCare icon.
* Once the client machines comes to know of availability of printer on another machine,
* You will see a dialog box asking for permission to install printer driver on that machine.
* Once you approve the install, OneCare will install printer in the background.
* Once the installation is complete, you will be notified of the result i.e. success or failure of installation.
* If installation is successful, you will also be provided opportunity to print a test page and set it up as default printer.
* This dialog is presented to every user on the client machine.
* Once you see the success dialog, anytime both host & client machines are up at the same time and on the same network, you should be able to print to the printer from any application on the client computer, as if printer was directly attached to it.