I have a laptop on vista and a pc on XP. The pc is connected to an HP all in one thats works just fine. My laptop however cannot find it even though it finds the PC on the network and the printer is shared. Is this because the PC needs vista drivers to make the printer work from the laptop or am I approaching this from the wrong angle. I've installed the vista printer drivers on the laptop but nothing. Would I be right in thinking that were the set up the other way round, the printer would be fine as the vista will work with the XP drivers but not the other way round? Any help appreciated.
You might be over complicating this issue, however you seem to have covered all the angles so why not try it ?
Remember that it is all character and case sensitive even if you have a space where it shouldn't be. Re-check you steps and if your damned sure that its all the way its supposed too then you could try the printer in the Vista machine.
Almost all manufacterers websites should provide a fix for Vista if theres a known problem
found this link for you, you may have tried it already.
HP delayed the release of drivers for Vista because Microsoft kept changing the code for Vista and HP were fed up keeping up so they waited for the Final version of Vista before working on their drivers.