Local shared hosts in workgroup not found in discovery

I am trying to share a printer (HP Deskjet 1110) which is usb connected to a PC which is connected via wireless to my home Netgear router. The other host in my house is connected to the router via RJ45.

I have set "sharing" on the target printer as well as the network card in each local host. I have "discovery" set on each host as well. The both hosts are in the same workgroup although not the default Windows "workgroup".

I'm not able to install the printer because it fails discovery and cannot find it if I manually enter the hostname and printer share name either.

I'm not really surprised that I cannot find the printer through the network since I do not even see the host listed in the network viewed from either host.

Is there a setting that I missed? I would like to see the hosts on my local network from each host to the other.

What am I, or Microsoft, doing wrong? This used to be quite simple and I'm guessing it still should be. HELP!

I see the wireless host listed in the media servers which makes it all the more confusing to me. They connect to the Internet with no problems and have coexisted in my network for a long time (not a new installation).

abenavraham,

Only thing I found was that the two services were not started automatically.

The settings in the other tutorials were as depicted. I even turned sharing off and back on which didn't help.

Turning on the two services listed did get the computers to show up in each other's network view.

I then shared the Public folder in each computer to my user, which is the same on both computers.

I'm going to give up for today and try some things Wednesday (out of town tomorrow).

For what it's worth. I do share a hard TCP/IP addressed printer to each computer with no problems. That network printer is hardwired to the router and served via a TCP/IP port.

My issue is that the network printer's color printhead is kaput and I need to print some color documents. Otherwise I would never have known that I couldn't print over the network to another host's local usb printer.

What feedback do you get if you open a command prompt and type:
net view \\machine_name
where machine_name is the name of the machine you shared the USB printer from - i.e. if the PC is "bigrich001"
type: "net view \\bigrich001" (without the quotes")?

Is the printer listed under "Share name" as in the image below?

With the server computer "hpenvy" on and its printer too, here is both the graphic and command line views.

Does not make sense to me, the computer shows up in the graphic view but the net view command gets an error 53. Alsp tried command view using IP with same result to eliminate name resolution.

Which profile is active in Advanced Sharing Settings - Public or Private?

Can you post a screenshot of the Advanced Sharing Settings (located at Network and Sharing Center -> Advanced sharing settings). Also if Public folder sharing is turned ON select Turn off Public fol... to turn it off Make sure "All Networks" is expanded.

Do you have the same user/password account on both machines? Do any of them have blank passwords?

Do you have ANY 3rd party Antivirus/Firewall software outside of Windows Defender?

Also, what happens if you run the "net view \\hpenvy" command at a command prompt on that machine (hpenvy and not from MSI-H20)?
What version(s) of Windows 10 are you running on each machine?
Edit: I see the version of the one you posted in the screen shot - Is the other machine the same?

Also since the OS of the machine you posted in the screenshot is the April update 1803, is SMBv1 enabled or disabled (in add/remove features)? 1803 will have it disabled by default. Does the other machine also have 1803, or is it an earlier build?

One additional thing to try on the command line: type net view \\hpenvy.local to see what results you get. Error 53 I think is a Netbios name resolution issue and adding the .local I think uses Microsoft's implementation of mDNS (Zeroconf) which should bypass netbios if it is still active on either of your machines.

abenavraham,

I just logged on to update what I've found since and have not yet tried some of the suggestions you have been posting but you are in the right ballpark, even the right bleachers.

I have been able to 'see' the printer. Although Windows Defender has file and print sharing "allowed" in the Private network settings it only works when I turn the Windows Defender firewall off for the Private network on the machine serving the printer. I turned off that firewall and installed the printer and printed to it with no problems. It stops working again as soon as I turn the firewall back on for the Private network on the server node.

Both machines are running Win 10, Ver. 1803.

I downloaded and ran the "Windows Firewall Troubleshooter" but it finds no problems with the firewall. Par for the course for Microsoft troubleshooters. I have worked on computers for 40 years and can count on one hand the number of times Microsoft actually found and fixed one of their problems. Such is life in the Microsoft world.
Link: How to troubleshoot and fix Windows 10's firewall problems | Windows Central

I assume it is safe to continue running with the Private network firewall turned off so that is my "workaround" unless you have a better suggestion? What say you?

Thank for your help thus far!