Printing on my laptop from home?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve
  • Start date Start date
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Steve

Using Win 2003srv at work and WinXP on my laptop. I have my laptop all
setup to use a VPN connection to my work. This is great. I log on to my
laptop using my work domain and use off line files and my exchange account
as if I were there. My problem is that when I work from home I can't print
to a printer on my home network. How can I setup my laptop to allow me to
print to a printer on my home network without being a member of the
workgroup? Do I need to hook a printer directly to my laptop? Is that the
only way?
 
Steve said:
Using Win 2003srv at work and WinXP on my laptop. I have my laptop
all setup to use a VPN connection to my work. This is great. I log
on to my laptop using my work domain and use off line files and my
exchange account as if I were there. My problem is that when I work
from home I can't print to a printer on my home network. How can I
setup my laptop to allow me to print to a printer on my home network
without being a member of the workgroup?
Click to expand...

If you are using the Windows VPN client:

Open the Properties of the VPN object, tab Networking, select TCP/IP, click
Properties, click Advanced, and then:

uncheck "Use default gateway on remote network"

This will route all network traffic via your local network (and printer) and
ISP except that directly
associated with the PC you have VPNd to. If this causes your access
to other parts of that remote network to fail, you might need to use the
"route" command to set up some bespoke routing down the VPN connection.
 
Thanks Robin,
Here is some more info for you. I can't print to my home printers even when
I'm not using the VPN. If I log on to my laptop at home connected to my
home network I can not add any printers even though they are shared. I do
not have my computer as part of the workgroup because it is setup to be part
of a domain. Does that make sense? I'm trying to print to a home printer
without joining the workgroup and having to log in with a local profile. I
like using just one profile. Thanks for any help.
 
Steve said:
Here is some more info for you. I can't print to my home printers
even when I'm not using the VPN. If I log on to my laptop at home
connected to my home network I can not add any printers even though
they are shared. I do not have my computer as part of the workgroup
because it is setup to be part of a domain. Does that make sense? I'm
trying to print to a home printer without joining the workgroup
and having to log in with a local profile. I like using just one
profile.
Click to expand...

This is very tricky: you have your laptop configured to do a Domain logon,
but you are trying to use it at home in a non-Domain workgroup context. I'm
not surprised that it will not pick up local shares on the LAN.

I think I will hand over at this point to someone else who might know
whether this is possible, and if so how.
 
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