Printing with Airport Extreme using PC

I am having a similar problem. I have an Airport Extreme base station with an HP printer wired to it, and can successfully print wirelessly with an iMac, an iBook and a MacBook. But my son has a new Toshiba Satellite Laptop running Windows Vista, and though it connects wirelessly to the Internet through the Airport network without any problem, it cannot find the printer. I have downloaded the latest HP driver for Vista to the laptop, but no matter what I do it doesn't "see" the printer when I try to add it. Why would it be able to recognize and use the network but not the printer? (I know, the simple answer is "Why the heck did you get a PC laptop?" but my son insisted... maybe I should get a paternity test?)

I don't know if my experience will help but I'll give it a shot...I have a Canon MX700 (multi-function) that is connected to AEBSn via ethernet. I have to use ethernet in order to use the scanner function.

I have a Dell 8250 (Win XP) and 20" iMac connected via ethernet and IBM T41 (Win XP), and two MSI Wind netbooks (Win XP) connected wirelessly. All computers have no problem printing wirelessly to my Canon.

But I think the key for me was connecting via ethernet to the AEBSn rather than the USB port. When installing the printer drivers on each notebook I also had to select "connect to network already set up" rather than doing a standard install. After I did that the software went out and started looking for the printer and eventually found it connected to the AEBSn.

So if it were me, I would first connect via ethernet and then reinstall the printer drivers, looking for the option where the laptop is joining a network.

Okay, I solved my own problem. Darned if I know how... if anybody cares, it involved going onto the laptop and repeatedly going deeper and deeper into the Add Printer utility, opening things haphazardly in the hope that I was getting somewhere; then getting to a place where it asked for an IP address, where I entered the IP address of the Airport (not the printer, which is what it theoretically wanted) several times and then finally getting to the point where it gave me a list of different printer makes and models and then wanted me to download the driver (which was already installed) until somehow, about a half hour later, it finally listed the HP printer under Printers!

God, I hate PCs. This would have taken about 3 minutes on a Mac.

I've had a similar problem and no thanks to apple tech support found a solution using hints from various apple discussions

here is my system
hypersonic desktop xp pro ethernet to airport extreme
dell xps laptop vista wireless to airport extreme
xerox phaser 6110mfp usb to airport extreme

both hypersonic and dell had internet access
hypersonic could print
dell would print once then would have problem

here is my fix
uninstall avg antivirus
uninstall bonjour
uninstall xerox programs
drop vista firewall
clean registry
go to control panel/programs/and or remove windows components
remove any printer services then reboot
go back to control panel/programs/and or remove windows components
add all printer services then reboot
download bonjour setup
go to control panel/programs/run under compatibility mode
execute compatibility routine to run bonjour install as administrator
execute compatibility routine to run xerox driver install as administrator
go to control panel/printer to delete printer
execute compatibility routine to run bonjour wizard as administrator
close firewall
reinstall avg anti-virus
everything tested well, no problems so far

I have a simular problem.....with my iBook and I was able to print with the airport extreme...for some reason I can no longer print to my HP. I can print just fine with my iMac. I have tried every thing .

Might be worthwhile to check out http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8883084#8883084

It describes a successful Vista/AirPortExpress installation.

I'm not 100% sure if this is the problem with one you have running Vista, but I was having the same problem on my girlfriend's PC running XP. My HP printer is connected to the USB port on Airport Express and I could print from my MacBook Pro with no problems, but I could not print from the PC (Windows XP) at all. The problem (at least with mine) was in the port setting the printer was trying to use. Check out this link for an easy step-by-step solution to this problem (at least with XP anyway).

http://tech.ifelix.net/1004.html