I have a laptop that is networked to my main computer. I can use the broadband connection and use the printer. Printing has never been a problem until I tried to print this greeting card.

I'm trying to print a greeting card and apparently it communicates with my printer when it prints the card. I get the following message on my Canon 8500 printer:

"Cannot communicate with printer.
Turn Enable bidirectional support on in the printer's Properties dialog box."

I've look at the properties control box but don't see anything that would allow communication between laptop and printer.

Any ideas???

I have a laptop that is networked to my main computer.

How? How is the printer connected?

The printer is on my home network.

I ask again, how is the laptop networked to your main computer?

You say the printer is on your home network - so that means it is connected directly to your router and is independent of any computer. Is that how it is? If so, why isn't the laptop be connected the same way, instead of networked to the main computer?

I'm no computer expert. So I will explain this as best I can. I have three computers in the house I have 2 desktops hard wired to my broadband router. My laptop connects with the internet using wifi. I have set up some sort of printer network. Desktop A is hard wired to the printer. Both Desktop B and the laptop can use the printer through a network. So all three computers use the Canon 8500 printer.

I'm have difficultly using a greeting card template available only using IE. I can't get Desktop A to get the template to work. It used to work, but no longer. I can use Desktop B to print the cards. I can use the template on the laptop, but when I try to print the card I get this message:

"Cannot communicate with printer.
Turn Enable bidirectional support on in the printer's Properties dialog box."

Otherwise, the laptop seems to connect to the printer. I figure there must be a way to enable bidirection support.

Thanks for trying to help.

I'm no computer expert. So I will explain this as best I can.

No problem - that's why it is important to sort this out now.

Desktop A is hard wired to the printer. Both Desktop B and the laptop can use the printer through a network.

Here's where we have a bit of a problem. The printer is attached to Desktop A. I think what you mean to say is the printer is being shared by Desktop A and via sharing through the network, Desktop B and the laptop are able to print. This is not ideal, and you should look into getting a print server.

Look again in Control Panel > Printers and Faxes, then right click on the default printer (make sure the default printer is right too). Then click on the Ports tab and highlight the checked port. Below that you should see the option to use bi-directional printing.

There are many advantages to using a print server to "hang" your printer off of your network, instead of sharing it.

• No host computer needs to be up and running in order for others to print
• The printer can be centrally located, not tethered to a computer
• Security does not have to be compromised on the host computer by opening up sharing
• Firewalls don't have to be configured to allow sharing