Recently I bought a MacBook Pro. I decided that for long enough I had been very anti-Mac, and that it was time to get one of my own so that I could get used to it first hand etc. Admittedly I did only even consider this because the new Macs run on Intel architecture, and so I could install Windows XP or Vista onto it using Boot Camp (which I have since done, although OS X is definitely my main OS on here). I was looking forward to the challenge of learning a new OS, and figuring out all the little technical hitches along the way – and for the most part I succeeded. OS X was not as horribly alien or unusable as I had suspected.

However, around the same time I was getting my Mac, my Dad bought a new machine for his home office – a Compaq running Windows Vista. From this machine our only printer – an Epson AL-C1100 Colour Laser – is shared around the network using the standard Windows Printer Sharing. When I purchased my Mac, I did so with all the assurances I was given by the Apple website that OS X integrates flawlessly with Windows networks, and that I would be able to access all of the network resources as before. How wrong it was….

It appears that the compatibility with using the shared printers isn’t there between OS X & Vista, like it was with XP. Bear in mind that I bought this machine in June, and so Vista had been out long enough for Apple to update their software, or update their site to inform me that there would be problems. No matter what I try, including all the solutions online that claim to fix this I simply cannot get printing working from my MacBook Pro.

The two machines are on the same workgroup, and visible from one-another. I can share files between the two, and mount the Vista box’s Public folder through Samba. I therefore know that for this my user credentials are authenticating properly with Vista for File Sharing. However, when I try to access the printer through the Printer Setup Utility on the Mac, I get an authentication error ‘Unable to connect to server with the provided password and user name Error: 256′ The internet has yielded no results for this, and neither has the Apple Support site. When I get the time I will make use of my AppleCare and call a human being for assistance, although I expect I will be told it is a Windows error and they can’t help me…