Darren Watt

Had a few problems getting a networked printer from a Windows share working in Leopard - and googling to find the solution showed that I wasn’t the only one, so here’s a quick tut on how I got it going in the end…

Forget trying to add the printer in the System Prefs - looks like there’s still currently a bug in 10.5.x which stops this working correctly, so instead you can add it via CUPS. This works directly on the underlying unix layer rather than the lovely Apple-ness but it works rather than looking pretty. To access it type in http://localhost:631 to your browser.

This should bring up the CUPS main menu.

Select “Add Printer” from the menu.

Type in a name to identify the printer on your Mac. The other fields are optional. Then ‘continue’.

Under Device, select ‘Windows Printer via SAMBA’, then ‘continue’.

Enter the path for the shared printer, eg.

smb://ipaddress-of-windows-pc/shared-printer-name

Lots of people are reporting having problems using hostname rather than IP address, so as long as your host has a fixed IP address this won’t be a problem. Just put the IP address in.

Select the correct manufacturer of the printer you’re setting up, then ‘continue’.

Select the correct model of the printer you’re setting up, then ‘continue’.

Enter the account for accessing the remote shared printer - I had problems unless an admin account for the Windows PC sharing the printer was used.

That should do the job. Trying to print a test page from CUPS still failed but printing from Mac OS works with no problems now. Also the printer should appear in your System Preferences / Printers settings. Good luck, took me ages to get it going.