---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: Sharing Printer from 64-bit box to 32-bit clients
author:
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wordpress_id: 319
wordpress_url: http://blog.10ninox.com/2008/10/11/sharing-printer-from-64-bit-box-to-32-bit-clients-2/
date: '2008-10-11 12:35:48 +0700'
date_gmt: '2008-10-11 17:35:48 +0700'
categories:
- software
- network
tags: []
---
<p>Well, I was starting to turn all my Windows boxes to 64-bit--all Linux ones are 64-bit already. I expected to see an improvement, but yet to see in practice. Along the way to transform to 64-bit, I had a problem about printer sharing. By the fact that I had network attached printer, you might wonder why I need to share it again. If I told you here that my printer was HP, most of you guys might get it why I prefer to do this way.</p>
<ol>
<li>HP drivers are crap.</li>
<li>It comes with a lot of bloatwares.</li>
<li>Too many running processes required.</li>
</ol>
<p>Windows also doesn't have currently HP printer driver, so I couldn't print that easily. The advantage of this method is you could just add a shared printer with minimum driver installed on your workstation. Please share if you have a better way to do so.</p>
<p><img src="http://blog.10ninox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/image1.png" border="0" alt="additional drivers" width="378" height="156" /></p>
<p>By the way, Microsoft put some trick making this more difficult than it should be. The idea is when you install the driver on the 64-bit box then share. This is simple. However, this will allow only 64-bit machine to use this shared printer since there is no 32-bit driver or any particular driver for your machine architecture. Simple solution is adding another architecture driver to that. That was an unexpected problem started.</p>
<p><img src="http://blog.10ninox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/image3.png" border="0" alt="Windows Media (x86 processor)" width="435" height="228" /></p>
<ol>
<li>Add drivers, then it will ask for driver for the architecture you choose--32-bit in this case.</li>
<li>Browse for the 32-bit drivers.</li>
<li>Then it will ask for Windows Media (x86 processor) [ntprint.inf file]</li>
<li>What the heck is that??
<ul>
<li>I put VIsta setup disc</li>
<li>download new drivers</li>
<li>find the file in %windir%</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Those above don't help. So, how do we know where and what that files are. I just found that it was located in your x86 machine.</p>
<blockquote><p>%windir%\winsxs\x86_ntprint.inf_******************</p></blockquote>
<p>That's where you need to point to or you can just copy that folder out to 64-bit. That would be fine as well. After this, you've done. Sit back and relax. All your machine will be able to use the shared printer seamlessly.</p>
<p>Thanks to the development of network, so that we can live our lives much more comfortable :-P</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Note:</span></strong> For sharing printer from 32-bit box to 64-bit one, you just have to get the **_ntprint** folder from 64-bit machine, then add driver as procedure above. You will be all set. =)</p>