Problems connecting to a shared printer

An odd situation arose yesterday regarding connecting to a printer attached to a computer on my home network. The computer was running Windows 7, the printer was an HP DeskJet 3050, it was plugged in using a USB cable and the printer was set up as shared in Windows 7. Everything was correct and working fine.

I wanted to print from another computer on the network, an old one that was running Windows XP. I went to Printers and Faxes in the Control Panel, clicked Add a printer, chose to browse for it on the network and the Windows 7 PC was there. The shared devices on the Win 7 PC could be seen and the printer was added. Fine.

The problem occurred because there were accounts on the XP PC for others in the household. You can't add a shared printer for everyone to use, you must log on to each user account and add it all over again. I logged off as me, logged onto my wife's account and tried to add the printer. Although I could see the Windows 7 PC, I could not see any shared devices. There was no printer. I logged off, logged back on as me and the printer was there, log off, log on to my wife's account and it wasn't.

I logged off and logged on as one of my kids. (Everyone's account is an administrator as is common in XP in case you were wondering.) I went to Printers and faxes, clicked Add a printer, selected browse on the network and there was the Windows 7 PC and the shared printer.

This was odd. My account and my child's account could see the shared printer and add it, my wife's account couldn't.

One of the strange things I have noticed with XP (and possibly Vista and 7) is that not all accounts are created equal. Here were three admin accounts, two of which were fine and one that wasn't. My account was the first one created and is the one I use when installing software. It has few problems and always seems better than the others. The question was, what was the difference between my wife's and my child's accounts?

One difference was that my wife's account had a password and my child's didn't. I took the password off my wife's account in Control Panel/ User Accounts and magically it could see the shared printer on the Windows 7 PC on the network.

Why would having a password on your account stop you from seeing and connecting to a shared resource on the network? That's bizzarre, but it's what happened and removing the password solved the problem.

Whenever you are doing anything that involves the network, such as connecting to shared resources, installing software that uses the internet and so on, you should always disable all security. The firewall is an obvious thing to disable of course, but it seems that you also have to remove the password on your account too. When everything is set up and working, you can enable the security again.