Windows NT Server 4.0 Administration Notes


Module 8: Managing Network Printers 

Introduction to Administering Printers
Managing documents
    • Delete a document
    • Set a notification
    • Change a documents priority

Managing printers:

    • Pause and resume a printer
    • Redirect documents
    • Purge a printer
    • Take ownership of a printer
  • The requirement for administering printers is the Full Control print permissions
  • Members of the
    • Administrators,
    • Print Operators
    • Server Operators
    • Power Users

    have this permission

Group Built in capabilities
Print Operators and Server Operators
  • Add and remove printers
  • Share printers
  • Take ownership of a printer
Power Users
  • Add and remove printers
  • Share Printers
  • Take ownership of a printer

 

How Documents are printed: 

There is a spooler on the print server

  • It's like a buffer for print documents
  • if a document becomes stuck in the spooler, you might need to restart the spooler using Control Panel, Services

Windows NT and Windows 95 - Based Clients

These systems have an additional spooler on the client computer - this local spooler does half the job and then sends it on to the print server. This gives you control of the application you are using more quickly.

Here's the process:

  1. printer driver partially processes the document to an acceptable format for the print device
  2. document goes to the spooler on the CLIENT computer where it stays until there is room in the print server spooler
  3. the print server spooler finishes processing the document. The document waits until a print device is available. Then, it prints.

 
Other Clients

For other clients there is only a spooler on the print server

Here's the process:

  1. the printer driver completely processes the document to an acceptable format for the print device
  2. the document waits in the print server spooler until a print device is available


 

For Non-Microsoft based clients, the appropriate service must be running on the print server:
 

UNIX TCP/IP Line Printer Daemon (LPD) Service
NetWare File and Print Services for Netware (FPNW)
Macintosh Services for Macintosh

 

Setting a Notification, Priority and Printing Time

These are all ways to control print jobs:

To Do this Why you would want to...
Set a Notification type logon name of the user you want to notify do this when someone other than the user who printed the document needs to go get it from the printer
Change a document priority Move slider to any number you like: 
99 highest; 1 is the lowest
Change so critical documents print first
Set available hours Set the range of hours that the document can print To print a long document at night. This allows you to make sure the document spools correctly during work hours, but that it prints at night.

 

Redirecting Documents
  • You can redirect documents to either a local or network print device.
    • For example, if a printer is connected to a faulty print device, redirect the document so users don't need to resubmit them.
  • You can't create, delete or configure ports over the network; YOU HAVE TO DO THAT LOCALLY
  • When redirecting a printer, the new printer must use the same print device driver as the current printer
  • You may also need to remove the original port to ensure the documents print to the redirected port
  • When there are multiple ports, the printer searches for an available port in the order that the ports were added
Taking Ownership of a Printer

By default, the user who installed the printer own it
if that user is gone, you can take ownership in order to change printer administrators

These users can take ownership of a printer

  • members of these groups
    • Administrators
    • Print Operators
    • Server Operators
    • Power Users
  • a user or member of a group that has FULL CONTROL permission for the printer

To take ownership:

From the Printer dialog box:
File | Properties | Security | Ownership

Click Take Ownership
 

Identifying Printing Problems 

 

Problem Possible Cause Solution
User gets an Access Denied message when trying to configure a printer from an application
  • user doesn't have appropriate permissions to change printer configurations (Need FULL CONTROL)
  • give user the permission 
  • or do it for the user
document doesn't print completely or comes out garbled
  • wrong printer driver
change the printer driver (Oh Henry, Oh Henry)
hard disk starts thrashing and document doesn't reach print server
  • not enough hard disk space for the spooler
Create more free space or move the spooler location to another partition. 
(How do you do this?)
No one can print- documents on the server that you can't print or delete
  • Stalled print spooler
Stop, then restart the SPOOLER SERVICE

 


E-mail Me! Comments and suggestions? E-mail me at grantwil@sk.sympatico.ca
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 10, 1999 Grant Wilson, Tisdale, SK. Canada