Can't print to a printer shared from windows 10 - get a 'Hold for Authentication' error

Has anyone else had a problem connecting to a shared printer (on Windows 10)?

I have a USB connected Dymo 4XL label printer connected to a Windows10 PC. I tested the printer on Windows, then shared it on my home network (workgroup).

On my macbook (running Big Sur), I've added the printer using the 'Windows' option to select the workgroup->PC->Share Name. Completed the install with the 4XL driver I installed earlier.

When I go to print, it connects, then I see the print job is paused with a 'Hold for Authentication' error. If I click on the 'redo' button in the queue, it requests the username and password.

This is where I got stuck - no matter what combination of username/password tried, nothing worked.

Followed some good articles on diagnosing the issue, as well as completely resetting the CUPS system.

Finally figured out the problem, after looking at the '/etc/cups/printers.conf' file in the CUPS system. When I looked at DeviceURI: line and followed a suggestion on the CUPS forum of putting the username password into the DeviceURI line - however, the format for this line (on the CUPS.org forum) implies that you can't have a username with an '@' in the name.

Now, Windows 10 encourages all users to have email addresses (Windows Live) as user names, so I was restricted to email addresses. The only solution I found was to convert the WindowsLive account into a local user on the PC (a name without any special characters or an '@' symbol).

Before converting the account, I removed the 4XL printer on Windows. Then reinstalled it as the local user and shared it. Now I was sure it had the right username/password combo.

When I added the shared printer on my mac, it printed fine.