XP Home workgroup, and sharing printers

[BATcher]

Having just set up a three-PC XP Home workgroup, and enabled file and printer sharing, I was surprised to find that, wven though I hadn't shared the printers, they were visible to each PC (well, more or less).

Would one expect a difference in this behaviour between:

1. real networked printers, i.e. those with a network interface card (like JetDirect) installed, and
2. the situation where each printer was attached to its own PC by a USB or parallel-printer cable (this was the workgroup situation)?

Thanks!

[JoeP517]

[quote name='BATcher' post='768870' date='02-Apr-2009 10:06'][/quote]

More or less visible?

The connected printers are just being made visible by XP not necessarily accessible. You would not see them if in Windows Explorer you went to Tools | Folder Options | View and unchecked "Automatically search for network folders and printers".

Joe

[BATcher]

[quote name='joeperez' post='768893' date='02-Apr-2009 17:39']More or less visible?

The connected printers are just being made visible by XP not necessarily accessible. You would not see them if in Windows Explorer you went to Tools | Folder Options | View and unchecked "Automatically search for network folders and printers".[/quote]
What I really meant was that on most of the PCs, there were more of them visible in "Printers and Faxes" than not, but I didn't have time to try to print to any of them. I was surprised to have got File Sharing working so easily. I will need to return to 'really' Share the Printers, plus a few other things (about one of which I will post separately).

Thanks for the Windows Explorer pointer, to be checked next time!