Setup AirPrint on MacOsX or Windows 7/Vista shared printers

AirPrint is a good feature but people still complaining that you need to use special "WiFi" enabled printers. You can print on printers connected to an Apple Airport WiFi router, but not on a Mac or Windows connected printer. We don't know if 4.3 will allow printing on a Shared printer, if not, here is the way to do it.

Mac connected Shared printer

In a previous post I put some hidden hints to a Mac OS hack allowing AirPrint on a Mac connected printer. You won't find it here because it contains an Apple driver, but if you google "AirPrintFix cloudapp" you may find it there. There is a readme file inside the zip and even with limited OS knowledge you can install that.

Windows 7/Vista

• Set your printer as shared in Control Panel>Printers Right Click Share 
• Download AirPrint.zip (this file is inside iTunes Install files in AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi) 
• Create a folder called AirPrint in Program Files 
• Unzip AirPrint and put the three files in your AirPrint Program Files folder 
• airprint.exe 
• libairprint.dll 
• XpdfPrint.dll 

• From the AirPrint directory Run airprint -i  in Admin mode to install the print service.
  airprint -r will remove the service 
• When you start the AirPrint service, Windows Firewall will prompt you allow or deny AirPrint features to be shared over networks. Click on Allow access button. 

You may need to install and start Bonjour if you never installed iTunes on your computer.

• The simplest solution is to install the latest iTunes
• If you dont want to install iTunes you can just install Bonjour by downloading the service from Apple here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999.

In theory you should be able now to see all shared printers from your iPhone or iPad. Try to print something from the mail program.

In most cases you will be asked at least once for a login & password. Use the login password you use to log on the computer on which the printer is connected. Some people claim (Couldn't do it here) that if you enable the guest account you don't need a login password. I suppose the guest account should be set as one of the printer user in the printer security tab.

Good luck.

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Alternate way to start the service is by running sc.exe in a CMD windows in Admin mode. sc.exe /help should print the help and all command. Check this Microsoft link for sc.exe information.

Windows 64bits:

sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files (x86)\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start AirPrint

Windows 32bits:

sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start AirPrint