Module 8: Managing Network Printers


NT Administration Notes
Introduction	Users	Groups	Admin
Shares	NTFS	Printing 1	Printing 2
Auditing	Monitoring	Backup

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:

printer driver partially processes the document to an acceptable format for the print device
document goes to the spooler on the CLIENT computer where it stays until there is room in the print server spooler
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:

the printer driver completely processes the document to an acceptable format for the print device
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

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Comments and suggestions? E-mail me at grantwilson21@yahoo.com I'm sorry, but I can't answer specific network-related, or exam-related questions.
Last Updated: August 6, 2001	Grant Wilson, Edmonton, AB Canada