Cannot connect to a shared printer on the network Windows 11

After days of trying to get my new Surface running Windows 11 to print to my wireless network printer connected to my Asus desktop running Windows 10, this is what I came up with

NETWORK SHARING AND PRINTING

We have 4 machines:

2 are running Windows 10 and 2 are running 11

Machine       Wiindows     Machine name            Username

Old Surface              10                   Sarah-surface3            saran

Asus Desktop           10                   BuzMachine             Buz                

Lenovo                      11                   Lenovomachine            buztre

New Surface            11                   sarah-2-surface            SARAH-2-SURFACE\trevo

For printing to work there are important considerations. Network and sharing protocols must be uniform and there are a number of places where these parameters are set. You must check that they are consistent. Logiic says that they should be synchronised, but it is not the case!

For Starters:

PRESS WIINDOWS START KEY

PRESS SETTINGS KEY

SELECT NETWORK AND INTERNET

Depending on which machine you are using, you will get one of the two following screens:

In either case, click on the arrowed area. The following screen appears (or something very similar)

MAKE SURE THE “PRIVATE” NETWORK PROFILE IS SELECTED EVEN IF IT TELLS YOU THAT “PUBLIC” IS RECOMMENDED.

The next step seems intuitive, but it is not!

On the MASTER machine (the one connected to the Internet physically)

Press START

Press Settings

Select “Devices”

Select “Printers and Scanners”

Select the Printer you are interested in.

Press MANAGE

Select “Printer Properties”

This screen appears

You are going to access the “Sharing” and “Ports” tabs

Thiis screen appears for the “Sharing” tab

Ensure that the “Share this printer” box is checked!

Click on the “Ports” tab and the following screen appears.

This part is bizarre!

Make sure that the check box for the correct Printer port is checked. This should be automatic but one of the problems networking the new Surface was because the port was not checked..

So far so good. Now we need to check that the MASTER computer is “seeing” the devices on the local network.

Open “File Explorer”

****

Right-click on “Network”. If the universe is unfolding as it should. The following screen should appear.

Under “Computer” there are 4 listed. These are part of the network. This is good.

You should be able to click on any of the computers and see what devices you have access to. If you click on the MASTER (BUZMACHINE) in this case, you will see which printers are networked.

Here is a wrinkle: if you are on a “SLAVE”” computer and you click on one of the computers, you may get an error message. This is one of the totally frustrating things!

Go to SETTINGS on the “Slave Computer”

SYSTEM

NEARBY SHARING

Check the box ”Share content with a nearby device using Bluetooth and Wi-fi”.

You should be good to go now!

'after the above screen it requires user name and password

but i dont have any'

The answer with the green check mark also fixed my issue. I had never seen this before, but I have a feeling I'll see it again.

The driver's install instructions come up in Spanish (or Portugese). Seems highly suspicious

Darrell - Can't tell from all these posts whether you ever got your problem resolved. I have the same problem with a new Win11 computer not being able to connect with a printer on a Win10 computer. even more strange, I got another Win11 computer to connect.