How to set up an HP printer on a Hybrid XP /Vista Network

Well, as some of us are transitioning to Vista, I have ran into a few cases where I am setting up an HP printer on a local xp machine, and all of the XP machines can print to it, but the Vista machines on the network cannot. You will get an access denied error message. This is a very easy problem to remedy, however, it is a very trying problem to find out how to remedy. This is why I am posting the instructions here. The first step is to extract the Vista driver to your Vista Machine. When you run the installer for the Vista driver from HP's website(www.hp.com), the initial gui(install screen will pop up). Go ahead and run through the entire setup process. Check the box that says will plug printer in later when it asks you.Go to printers on your vista machine and click add new printer.

Choose "Add local printer." Choose create new port and make sure local port is selected.

Hit next. In the port name, type the full name of the xp printer you wish to map to(ex. if may printer name is hpprint on desktop2, then the path would be \desktop2hpprint). Next look through the locally installed drivers and choose the one that corresponds with your printer. There you have it. One of the reasons I have found this to happen is that there are "server driver" properties in Vista that do not play well with XP. You can manipulate these by doing some registry hacks on your XP machine, but this is a much simpler route.