[Old Jess]

I have a Dell desktop running Vista Home Premium connected (wired) through a Linksys router to a DSL modem for Internet access. I have a Dell A940 printer attached to the desktop via USB. I also have an HP laptop running Vista Home Premium and running a wireless connection to the Internet. I want to share the Dell A940 so I can print from the laptop.

I have followed all instructions from the Microsoft forums regarding setting up file and printer sharing. The Dell printer shows as shared on the desktop. Both machines can see the other machine on the network, but neither one can access the other machine when I double-click on the icon. I have disabled PC-Cillin, but that doesn't help. I have set PC-Cillin to trust the other machine in both directions and that doesn't help. When I double-click on the desktop icon from the laptop, I get an error message that Windows cannot access the system. The name is spelled exactly as it is defined. When I ask Windows to diagnose the problem, it tells me that the DNS name was not recognized/valid.

I've seen lots of discussion regarding problems accessing printers on XP machines, but not very many regarding Vista to Vista issues. Any ideas regarding what could be causing this issue?

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Update on 2008-04-05:

Problem solved. The issue was Trend Micro's Internet Security personal firewall setting. I had the profile set to "Wireless". When I changed it to "Office Network" the problem disappeared.

It seems that the reason my previous efforts at disabling the firewall on both the desktop and the laptop didn't work was because I didn't disconnect from and reconnect to the wireless network after I shut the firewalls off. Once I did that, I could see the printer, so I then knew that the issue had to be the firewall settings.

[Old Jess]

Update on 2008-04-05:

Problem solved. The issue was Trend Micro's Internet Security personal firewall setting. I had the profile set to "Wireless". When I changed it to "Office Network" the problem disappeared.

It seems that the reason my previous efforts at disabling the firewall on both the desktop and the laptop didn't work was because I didn't disconnect from and reconnect to the wireless network after I shut the firewalls off. Once I did that, I could see the printer, so I then knew that the issue had to be the firewall settings.