Cannot Start Print Job on Windows 98 Printer Share

When you attempt to print from a Windows 2000-based computer to a printer on a Microsoft Windows 98-based computer that is shared with a share-level password, the print job may not succeed. You may receive the following error message: Depending on the program you are printing from, you may receive a different message. For example, if you print from Notepad, you may receive the following error message:

This can be an authentication issue. The credentials (the user name and password) offered to the Windows 98-based computer are the user name and password of the user who is currently logged on to the Windows 2000-based computer. The password may not match the user name and password for the printer share.

To resolve this issue, use any of the following methods:

• Set the password on the printer share to a blank (empty) password.
• Log on to the Windows 2000-based computer as a user who has a password that matches the password for the printer share.
• Change the password for the printer share on the Windows 98-based computer to match the password for the user who is currently logged on to the Windows 2000-based computer.

If you require password protection for network resources, a better model to use might be a domain model. In a domain environment, the Windows 98-based computer could be set to use user-level access permissions to share the printer.