Windows Cannot Connect to The Printer Access is Denied
If your are trying to connect a network printer or a shared printer in Windows Vista you may of come across this great error “Windows Cannot Connect to The Printer Access is Denied”. when I first ran into this I ended up uninstalling the firewall on both sides of the systems. The thing was I could see the files and access them just fine. I was even able to share another printer on the network but when I tried sharing and connecting my HP printer it just would not work. Now I have not spent enough time to figure out why this is happening but I do have fix. I would rather have my issue resolved and not know what’s happenign then to know whats happening and not have my issue fixed.
Anyways on to why you came here.
Instead of clicking add network printer just select “Add Local Printer”. Now at the bottom click on “Create a New Port”. You will see the default is “Local Port”. Keep that the same and then click next. Now is were you add in the location to the printer. All you have to do is use the computer’s name you are connecting to and the shared printers name.
It will look like this
\\computername\sharedprintername
BE SURE TO USE THE SHARED PRINTER NAME, not the regular name of the printer.
so my path was \\COLUMBIA\hpdeskjet5500
That is it. Now you solved your frustating Windows Cannot Connect to The Printer Access is Denied error.
Be sure and respond if this worked of if it did not for you. If it worked then share the wealth and spread the news. You can allways just point people to this article as well.
P.S. The super bowel this Sunday was awesome. I did not have a team in it so I was rutting for the under dog. It was awsome seeing the Giants pull it out.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 am
THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!!
March 1st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Thanks so much I could not connect to my printer access was denied. but your tip about the local printer and changing the port worked excellent
March 14th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
It worked! Good Job!! Gold Star for you!!
March 14th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I love gold Stars!! Glad people are finding my tips useful. If you guys every have questions just post them in out forum.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Another gold star from me! And many thanks!
Took me a few minutes to fix: perhaps you could clarify that the printer name to use is in the path is not the ‘printer name’ but the ‘share name’ (mine had different ones), which can be checked by right-clicking on the printer for ‘properties’ and then looking at the ‘sharing’ tab.
By the way, you should maybe tell Microsoft and HP about this simple solution of yours, because they obviously don’t understand! They have pages suggesting another solution which I couldn’t even implement because the description of the commands is wrong. See:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01043315&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=&product=1101938&rule=9843
March 20th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
The article states to use the shared name multiple times. I’ll take another look and try to make it a little clearer.
As far as contacting M and HP. I don’t think they would even listen. I have contacted HP before about simple fixes like the unkown printer driver error but they don’t seem to have a way to push it back to whoever makes the changes to guides.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
thankyou so much, sorted!
May 13th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
tried the solution still didn’t solve my problem. keep on getting the same error message
July 10th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Bless your heart! It worked like a charm. THANK YOU!
July 18th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Thank you so much! Yours is the answer I finally needed to make everything work (after days of frustration).
September 10th, 2008 at 4:32 am
works perfect. wish i googled you sooner…wasted way too much time on a simple solotion…
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Spent hours trying to get a solution from MS and Canon. This worked in 10 seconds. Awesome, thanks for the fix!
May 19th, 2009 at 4:20 am
It worked right away. Thanks a lot.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Thank you, worked great!
August 26th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Still get “access denied” message. Firewalls are off. I can see the PC and the printer(Canon MP190), but can’t install through normal networking wizard or creating a new port!
November 7th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Thank you!!! It worked and I didn’t have to turn off my firewall. After hours of running back and forth between my laptop and desktop network, this was the only thing that worked. Thank you for sharing the info!!!!
January 13th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Great!! I almost lost my job thanks to vista ¬¬ Thanks a lot for this solution
March 17th, 2010 at 8:53 am
You are the MAN. Go work for Microsoft, so people get the help that actually works.
December 7th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Thanks much for the fix! It worked out well!