I currently have an HP Color Laserjet 1500L printer that is connected and shared at the main computer (XP Home Edition - 32bit) and I want my Windows 7 64 bit PC to connect to this printer. Is there any way to get around this situation?
I don't understand what the "situation" is. The 1500L only has a USB interface. If you want to locally share the printer with your Windows 7 PC, you can do so with a USB sharing device. (DO NOT CONFIUSE THIS WITH A USB HUB. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!!!!) If you are trying to share the printer via a network: Is windows 7 unable to use shared resources with XP Home? (I only use XP Pro so forgive my ignorance, since there is no issue with printer sharing in XP Pro) Alternately, it might be easier and cheaper in the long run to by a external Jetdirect (or USB network printer server) for the 1500L. That way you won't need to have the computer (with XP) on all the time when you want to use the printer. An example of such external servers are: j6035b hp jetdirect 175x Ethernet/ Fast Ethernet external print server j6038a hp jetdirect 310x Ethernet/ Fast Ethernet external print server j6061a hp jetdirect 380x 802.11b external wireless print server
A print server is used to allow multiple PCs sharing the same medium (wireless, wired ethernet) to share the same resource. Provided that you have an existing wireless or wired ethernet network that all of the PCs share, A print server would allow all PCs on the netwrk to share the printer.
There are lots of print servers that support Windows 7. I have provided you with three possible alternatives above. I will leave it to you to do your homework from there. Perhaps a bigger concern is whether or not there is a 1500L driver for Windows 7.
Ten years ago, a JetDirect device to put your printer on a LAN cost a couple of hundred US dollars. Because you're on the Mac forum, may I suggest your problem may be that the OS attached to the printer does not support more than one user at a time. Were it MacOSX, Unix, or Linux, you would have no problem. As an alternative to a print server, that only serves ... print, you could pick up a discarded PC from a thrift shop & install GNU/Linux on only it. The CUPS (common Unix printing system) will share your printer over the network. CUPS can do more. It can accept print streams in most any format, translate all to your printer's language, queue them on the dumpster laptop's hard drive (rather than yours), and - if you wish - print a separator page. That hasn't changed in 30 years.
