Member Avatar for normanallen

I have a desktop running XP SP3 which has my printer connected via a parallel cable. My son has a notebook running Vista. We have his internet connection working via my wireless router (Belkin).
He asked for printer sharing to be set up. Both machines are now in the same Workgroup, and the printer is shared on my machine.
When I went to install the network printer it picked up the Bluetooth connection (I had a Bluetooth dongle in one of my USB ports).
When I try to print something from his machine, the printer queue on my machine says "Spooling" and then it disappears (and nothing prints). This keeps cycling every minute or so, I'm still not sure how I stopped this. The notebook installed the correct printer driver.
Q1: Why is this happening, and what can I do about it?
Q2: Should I remove the Bluetooth dongle, delete the "Network printer" and try again to use the Wi-Fi connection?
Q3: What else might need to be done to get it working?
He has Works installed on the notebook, and doesn't want to have to go to the trouble of converting it to a doc (that my XP Office recognises) putting on a memory stick and reading from my machine/ You can see where he's coming from.

Any suggestions welcome.

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Dani AI

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A few focused checks and fixes that tend to resolve the symptom described (jobs appear then vanish from the XP queue). is right to flag compatibility/connection issues — the likely causes are a driver mismatch that crashes or discards the job on the XP machine, the wrong transport/port being used, or the XP spooler/firewall blocking or restarting the job. Try these in order.

  1. Driver strategy (most common)
  • Make sure the Vista notebook is using a driver that Vista expects. On the XP host, open the printer Properties and use the Sharing/Additional Drivers dialog to pre-install the client driver(s) Vista will need (x86 or x64 as appropriate).
  • If that is difficult, install the correct Vista driver locally on the notebook first, then add the network printer while telling Vista to use its locally installed driver (this avoids the server trying to push an incompatible driver).
  1. Spooler and corrupt job files
  • Restart the Print Spooler service on the XP box (Services or net stop spooler / net start spooler).
  • If jobs are stuck, stop the spooler and remove files from the spool folder before restarting:
    net stop spooler
del /Q %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\*.*
net start spooler

    (These commands clear pending jobs; use as needed.)

  1. Networking, permissions and ports
  • Confirm the Vista client can reach the XP machine by pinging the XP host name/IP.
  • Check XP firewall and any third-party firewall to allow File and Printer Sharing (SMB: TCP 139/445, UDP 137/138).
  • On the XP printer Security tab give the connecting user (or Everyone) Print permission, or create a matching username/password on XP so authentication is seamless.
  1. Workarounds and alternatives
  • If the Bluetooth/virtual port was picked up during install, temporarily disable that adapter while adding the printer so the client uses the network path.
  • If sharing continues to fail, consider a small USB print server or the router’s USB printer feature (if available) so the printer is truly network-attached.

If errors persist, check the XP Event Viewer (System/Application) for print-spooler or driver crash entries and post those error messages for targeted troubleshooting.

Member Avatar for OlyComputers

I would share it through wifi instead of bluetooth. You'll have better range and all around better support/functionality, but you shouldn't have to remove the dongle, just connect over the network rather than directly via bluetooth when setting up the printer on his laptop.

How old is this printer? Vista can have trouble with older printers and if this is connected via parallel there may not be a vista driver for it (especially if his laptop is running the x64 version).

Try connecting it through the network if it doesn't show up automatically when adding the network printer from his laptop click "my printer wasn't listed" and manually enter the printer (//server/share name).

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