Hi I want to use the printer that is connected to my desktop on my laptop. It is a lexmark X1500 all in one. When I click find printer on my laptop it cannot find anything. My laptop has vista and desktop has xp. Why is it doing this?

First check weather you have shared your printer and if shared the try this out.
Type the ip address of the xp machine in the run command from your vista (start-run-(\\xp ip address)) then click OK then you will find the lexmark printer that is shared in your xp right click on the printer and click connect .

It says its not a valid name or something.

Where does it say you mean when connecting to the xp machine or when trying to connect the shared printer?

To connect to the xp machine, maybe I haven't got them connected to properly?

First tell me how are you connecting to your xp machine share the printer and give the ip address which you had given in tcp/ip configuration to connect to your xp PC

I didn't give any of that I'm so confused :(

Then its pretty difficult to catch you on from now . You can browse here and take the help of other user asked question where you can find how to connect two computers and then share the printers. Sorry:o

I don't know what to do :( Thanks anyway.

First you check any firewall block your network like (windows firewall or anti-virus firewall)