XP printing to Win 98 shared printers

I have 25 Windows 98 pc’s in a workgroup. 5 pc’s have shared printers. I have added 2 XP Laptops to the workgroup. From these XP workstations I can see all the pc’s and the shared printers. I try to connect to a printer via windows explorer by right clicking on the printer, it asks me load the drivers so I do and this adds the printer to my printer list. The problem is when I try to check status of the printer it never give me any reply back not to mention any job I spool the printer just sits in the queue. If you look at the list of printers it shows the name, pending jobs, and the status is “connecting”. The locally attached printer shows “connected”. What am I over looking?