Comments on: HOWTO: Print To Your Mac’s Printer From Windows Using BonJour

By: Randy Phillips

Randy Phillips — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:40:31 +0000

There was an extra step on the MAC side that I had to do to make the printer available to the BonJour wizard on the windows machine.
I had to use the EDIT button on the MAC Sharing window to choose “Use dynamic global hostname” and click “Advertise services in this domain using Bonjour” My OS X is 10.5.8

By: reggie

reggie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:53:34 +0000

Update –
I can now print! We had an temporary loss of internet connection at our access point (router) this morning. I pressed the “reset” button on the Actiontec router. After that, Bonjour saw the light and recognized the new imac name. In the end, though, I didn’t even use Bonjour. I was able to add the printer from the “Network” screen in VISTA. I had never been able to manage it that way before. Call it better living through serendipity, but I’m pretty sure that resetting the router cleared everything up. That probably would have done the trick without changing the imac’s name; but I am not going to mess with it now. I hope this can help someone, but it may have been a unique confluence of variables.
Thanks again for the original post. It gave me a place to start.
reg

By: reggie

reggie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:24:18 +0000

Hi Rosco –
I appreciate the response. Actually, Windows is recognizing the new imac name without a problem (see my post above). It’s Bonjour that stubbornly refuses to see a change. It’s as though the first time I ran Bonjour (about 9 months ago), it saw the Mac printer and now it’s blind to any changes that occur with it (kind of like true love, eh?).
As I said, I’ve tried uninstalling Bonjour, then restarting both the PC and the iMac before reinstalling Bonjour; but nothing changes. I also tried restarting the router.
I would not have changed the iMac name except that the printer was not working under the old name either — ever since I got FIOS. I know it’s not FIOS per se, but something about the network changed and I can’t seem to find a path through it. If you have any more ideas, let me know. Thanks.

By: Rosco

Rosco — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:38:49 +0000

Hi Reggie…This may seem obvious but would changing the iMac’s hostname back to the original one that Windows sees not work? Sure enough Windows should be seeing the new hostname but obviously isn’t. Interestingly, where are you changing the Mac’s hostname? Window sees the NETBIOS name located in System Preferences > Network > Airport (or Ethernet if that’s what you use) > Advanced > WINS tab > NetBIOS name. Let me know.

Cheers

By: reggie

reggie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:28:59 +0000

Help!
For about eight months I was able to print to my imac-attached printer from my PC without a problem. About a month ago, we switched from Verizon DSL to Verizon FIOS. New router, new SSID. I had no problem reestablishing the network and the MAC can still print to Windows printers, but I cannot get the PCs to print to the MAC printer.

In desperation, I changed the name of the iMac on my home network, thinking that maybe if I reestablished connection under a new name it would clear some blocked pathway. Unfortunately, what’s happened is that Bonjour will not let go of the old iMac name — even though the Windows Network sees the machine and its printers only under their new name. I’ve tried the sequence of uninstalling Bonjour, rebooting the computer, reinstalling Bonjour several times, hoping that Bonjour would forget its sordid past — no such luck. Any thoughts of what to try next? Yes, I did restart the imac after the name change. I also emptied the system cache.