Hi - my first post so please be gentle with me. I have an IBM R50 laptop running XP Home SP3 and a Dell desktop running XP Pro SP3. i have a printer connected to the Dell desktop. I have two accounts on the laptop - both set as administrator users. From one I can always print to the shared printer over the home network without a problem however from the other I cannot and I get an access denied message. Using this same account if I try to access a shared folder on the desktop then I am prompted to login, which I do using the Guest account. After that I can then print OK.
Question is, why with one of the accounts on the laptop does it always work OK whereas with the other it doesn't unless I try to access a network share first. I cannot see any differences between the way the two accounts have been setup. I'm guessing that when I try to access the printer XP is using the Guest account to gain access to the desktop and failing with one account but not the other. Once authentication has taken place by accessing a share then its OK. How do I get XP to automatically authenticate when I try to access the shared printer ?
Any help much appreciated.

TIA

You would need to have a user setup on the desktop that has the same username/password as the laptop.

Both users are replicated on both PC's. Neither have passwords on the desktop but both have passwords on the desktop. Thanks for your help but I still believe this is related to the Guest user somehow.

jdillman is correct. but in addition to that you need a password on those accounts you cannot have shared resources without a password unless you have modified the default local security policy of either system. I dont think that is something that you would have done. it will try to authenticate with the guest account but if the system doesnt have the guest account enabled it wont work. just put a password on the account and be done with it.