My home LAN consists of a Windows XP machine and a Windows 98 machine. The printer, a Panasonic KX-P6100, is connected to the Windows XP machine and works fine when printing from the Windows XP machine. However, when attempting to print from the computer running Windows 98 everything seems to work ok and the printer spooler on the Windows XP machine activates, but nothing prints! Panasonic advised to reinstall the printer drivers, but this makes no difference.

This is a tricky problem. Firstly, make sure that the Internet Connection Firewall is disabled on the Windows XP machine. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Connect To’ > ‘Show all connections’. Right-click on your LAN connection and select ‘Properties’. Click the ‘Advanced’ tab and make sure the ICF is disabled. Click OK.

In all likelihood, the ICF would have been disabled by default as this is the normal case for LAN connections. It is possible that there are some settings for the Windows 98 printer driver which are not set correctly. On the Windows 98 machine, go into the printer driver properties. There are so many settings it would be difficult for me to tell you exactly which ones to change. That said, one setting you should pay attention to is on the ‘Advanced’ tab. Try changing the ‘Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster’ to ‘Print directly to printer’ (or vice-versa). There is also another group of settings which is slightly hidden. Go back to the ‘General’ tab and click ‘Printing Preferences’. In the next window that appears, click the ‘Advanced’ button. I really just recommend that you play around with all your printer settings - as the worst that can happen is you need to reinstall your printer driver to restore the original settings. One setting I have seen being very problematic is the postscript language level. If there is an option for this on your printer, you may wish to change the language level.

Another possible remedy is to install the Windows XP printer drivers on the Windows 98 machine. I don’t really know how Windows 98 will handle doing this, as I have never attempted it myself. However, some people suggest this may solve the problem. Do this procedure at your own risk!

If you still have problems, there is a procedure at the Microsoft Knowledge Base article support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=810894 which may be able to help solve your problem. While this doesn’t directly relate to your issue, other people have reported this procedure will solve similar issues to yours. This is a complicated procedure, so I highly recommend that you print out the article (from your Windows XP machine of course’¦) and follow the instructions carefully. Be aware you may only need to perform one or two of the procedures in this article, depending on your computer’s configuration. So don’t be alarmed if you don’t do most of the procedures. If you still have the problem, please contact me again.