Spoke too soon.....
It works fine on xp home and xp 64
The problems started when Mandy got home with her lappy (xp pro 32)
I ran the netgear 'use the printer server' disk, all semed fine till I tried to print a test page and got pages of gobbldygook. I deleted all traces of HP printer drivers and re-installed the HP drivers, made sure it printed fine with a direct cabled connection (usb) and then ran the netgear router software again......it printed the first test page ok but then when I exited the software setup and re-ran the test page print I got the gobbldygook again!?
Anyone have any ideas? I have been at this for two hours