CHAPTER 8

ADMINISTERING PRINT SERVICES

Lesson 1: Introduction to Windows 2000 Printing

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server is designed for network printing. By using a computer that is

running Windows 2000 Server as your network print server, you an print from any supported

operating system that your networked computers use.

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Terminology

Printer. A printer is the software interface between the operating system and the print device.

The printer defines where a document will go to reach the print device, when it will go, and how

various other aspects of the printing process will be handled.

Print Device. A print device is the hardware that produces the printed documents. Windows

2000 supports the following print devices:

Local Print devices are those that are connected to a physical port on the printer server.

Network print devices are those that are connected to a print server through the network instead

of a physical port. Network print devices, also called network-interface print devices, require their

own network interface cards and have their own network address or they are attached to an

external network adapter.

Print Server. A print server is the computer on which the printers associated with local and

network print devices reside. The print server receives and processes documents from client computers.

You set up and share network printers on print servers.

Printer driver. Is one or more files containing information that Windows 2000 requires to convert

print commands into a specific language, such as PostScript. This conversion makes it possible for a

print device to print a document. A printer driver is specific to each print device model.

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Requirements for Network Printing

The requirements for setting up printing on a Windows 2000 network include the following:

At least one computer to operate as a print server. Microsoft recommends a dedicated print

server. The computer can run either of the following:

Windows 2000 Server, which can handle a large number of connections and support client

computers running MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and NetWare client redirectors

and printing services.

Windows 2000 Professional, which is limited to 10 concurrent connections from other

computers for file and print services.

Sufficient random access memory (RAM) to process documents. If a print server manages

a large number of printers or many large documents, the server might require additional RAM

beyond what Windows 2000 requires for other tasks.

Sufficient disk space on the print server to ensure that Windows 2000 can store documents

and other printable data sent to the print server until the print server sends the data to the print

device. For example, if 10 users send large documents to print at the same time, the print server

must have enough disk space to hold all the spooled documents in the print queue until the print

server sends them to the print device. If there is not enough space, you will receive and error message.

NOTE: Spooled print jobs can be significantly larger than the actual data the print application

reads. This is because print jobs are sent through the printer device driver to prepare the data

for the printer.

Guidelines for a Network Printing Environment

Before you set up network printing, develop a network-wide printing strategy to meet users’

printing needs without necessary duplication of resources or delays in printing.

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Guideline Explanation

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Determine users Number of users, and the workload. For example,

Printing requirements 15 users printing invoices all day will need more

A larger print server.

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Determine company’s Determine the printing needs of your company.

Printing requirements List all the different print devices, and the

Associated workload.

Determine the number Determine the number of print servers your

Of print servers required network requires to handle the number and

Types of printers your network will have.

Determine where to Determine where you will locate the print

Locate print devices devices. In a routed network, consider

placing the print servers and print devices

on the same network with the client computers

that will use them.

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Printing Configurations

Several combinations of clients, servers, and print devices are possible with Windows 2000,

depending on whether the print device is remote or nonremote. A remote print device is

accessed through a print server.

Each computer has its own job queue and cannot see the documents queued on the print device

by other computers.

Printing is controlled by the server administrator. The Administrator defines and enforces a

security plan for the network, maintains the printer software, and downloads it to clients when

they connect to the printer share.

You can also Add Printer wizard to connect to remote print devices. When doing so,

remember the following:

• Creating a printer means installing the print device either directly on a print server or

on the network, and then configuring the printer software that controls the print

device on the print server.

• Connecting to a printer means connecting to the share on the computer that

created the printer.

Lesson Summary:

• A printer is the software interface between the operating system and the print device.
• A print device is the hardware device that produces printed documents.
• A print server is the computer on which the printer associated with local and network

print devices reside.

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• A Printer driver is one or more files containing information that Windows 2000 requires

to convert print commands into a specific printer language.

• For Network Printing, you need at least one computer to operate as the print server,

sufficient RAM and sufficient disk space.

• Users requirements, and the companies needs.

Lesson 2: Setting up Network Printers

You can set up a printer for a print device connected directly to the print server, or you can

set up a printer for a print device connected to the print server over the network.

Installing a Local Print Device

To install a local print device, use the Add Printer Wizard on the print server. When prompted,

select Local Printer rather than Network Printer.

Installing a Network Printer Device

You add a printer for a network print device by using the Add Printer Wizard. The main difference

between local and network print devices is you provide additional port and network protocol

information for a network printer addition.

The default protocol is TCP/IP for Windows 2000.

Sharing an Existing Printer

If the printing demands on your network increase and your network has an existing, unshared

printer for a print device, you can share it so that users can print to the print device.

When you share a printer, consider the following guidelines:

• You need to assign the printer a share name, which appears in My Network Places.
• You can add printer drivers for Windows 95, Windows 98, all versions of Windows

NT, and Windows 2000.

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• You can choose to publish the printer in Active Directory services so that users can search

for the printer.

Lesson Summary:

To add a local or network printer you do into Add Printer Wizard.

The default protocol for the network printer is TCP/IP, which many network print devices use.

If printing increases on the network, you can share out the printer.

Lesson 3: Administering Network Printers

Accessing Printers

You can gain access to printer for administration by either using the Printers window on the

Start Menu or the Find feature in Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.

On the Security tab you can assign permissions. By using printer permissions, you can control

who can use a printer. You can also assign printer permissions to control who can administer a

printer and the level of administration, which can include managing printers and managing documents.

Windows 2000 provides three levels of printer permissions: Print, Manage Documents, and

Manage Printers.

You can allow or deny printer permissions. As with group policy and NTFS permissions,

denied permissions always override allowed permissions.

By default, Windows 2000 assigns the Print permission for each printer to the Everyone

system group, allowing all users to send documents to the printer.

Managing Printers

This includes assigning forms to paper trays and setting a separator page.

When the user prints a document, Windows 2000 automatically routes the print job to the paper

tray that holds the correct form. Example of forms include Legal, Letter, A4 and Executive.

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If the option is grayed out on the menu, it means the feature is not available, or installed.

Setting a Separator Page

A separator page is a file that contains print device commands. Separator pages have two

functions:

• To identify and separate printed documents.
• To switch between print modes.

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File Name Function

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Pcl.sep Switches the print mode to PCL fro HP series print devices

and prints a page before each document.

Pscript.sep Switches the print mode to PostScript for Hp printers, but

Does not print a page before each document.

Sysprint.sep Prints a page before each document.

Sysprtj.sep A version of Sysprint.sep that uses Japanese characters.

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You can build your own separator page by creating a .sep file that contains legal printer commands.

Pausing, Resuming, and Canceling Documents

You can do this in two areas: First select the print device, File, click Pause, or secondly

open in the File menu and select the appropriate command.

NOTE: You can also pause a printer by taking the printer offline. When you take a printer

offline, documents stay in the printer queue, even when the print server is shut down and then

restarted. To take a printer offline, open the window for the specific printer, and on the Printer

menu, click Use Printer Offline.

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Redirecting Documents to a Different Printer

You can do this by opening the Properties for the specific printer. You can redirect documents to

a different printer. For example, if a printer is connected to a faulty print device, redirect the

documents to that users do not need to resubmit them.

Taking Ownership of a Printer

By default, the user who installs the printer owns it. If that user can no longer administer the printer,

for example, if the current owner leaves the company, another owner should take ownership to

administer that printer.

The following users can take ownership of a printer:

• The user or a member of a group who has the Manage Printers permission for the

printer.

• Members of the Administrators, Print Operators, Server Operators, and Power

Users group.

• By default, these groups have the Manage Printers permissions, which allows them

to take ownership.

To take ownership you must be in the Advanced button in Security.

Managing Documents

This includes pausing, resuming, restarting, and canceling a document if there is a printing problem.

You can also set the priority level.

Pausing, Restarting, and Canceling a Document

Because the creator of a document has the default permissions to manage that document, users

can perform any of these actions on their own documents.

Setting Notification, Priority, and Printing Time

To perform these document management tasks: you must have the Manage Documents permission

for the appropriate printer.

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Administering Printers from a Web Browser

This can be done regardless of where the computer is running Windows 2000 or has the correct

printer driver installed.

All management tasks you perform with Windows 2000 management tools are the same when

you use a Web browser. For a windows 2000 Server print server to support Web pages, the

computer on which the printer resides must have Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)

installed.

Using a Web Browser to Manage Printers

There are several advantages:

• It allows you to administer printers from any computer running a Web browser,

regardless of whether the computer is running Windows 2000 or has the correct

printer driver installed.

• It allows you to customize the interface.
• It provides a summary page listing the status of all printers on a print server.
• It can report real-time print device data, such as whether the print device is in power

saving mode, if the printer driver makes such information available.

Assessing Printers Using A Web Browser

If you want to gain access to all printers on a print server by using a Web browser, open the

Web and type this:

http://<print_server>/<printers>

If you want to gain access to a specific printer without first viewing a list of all printers, use:

http://<print_server>/<share>

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Setting up a Printer Pool

A printer pool is one printer that is connected to multiple print devices through multiple ports on a

printer server. The print devices can be local or network print devices.

Print devices should be identical, however you can use print devices that are not identical but use

the same printer driver.

NOTE: When you set up a printer pool, place the print devices in the same physical area so that

users can easily locate their documents. If you don’t place the physical devices in the same area,

the downside is that the users won’t know exactly where their print jobs have printer. The upside

to this approach is that users will get additional exercise.

A printer pool has the following advantages:

• In a network with high volume of printing, it decreases the time that documents wait on the

print server.

• It simplifies administration because you can administer multiple print devices from a

single printer.

Setting Priorities Between Printers

This allows you to set priorities between groups of documents that all print to the same device.

Multiple printers pointing to the same print device allows users to send critical documents to a high

priority printer and noncritical documents to a lower priority printer. The critical documents always

print first.

To set priorities between printers, point two or more printers to the same print device, that is the

same port. The port can be either a physical port on the print server or a port that points to a

network print device.

Troubleshooting Common Printing Problems

• Is one user having a problem, or it is a group
• Is the print server operational?
• Does the client computer have the correct print driver.
• Is the Print Spooler service and Remote Procedure Cal (RPC) service running on the print server?

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Print Server Properties

From properties, select File menu, Server Properties. Review them to see if there is a problem.

By default, the spool folder points to %systemroot%\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Lesson Summary:

• You can gain access to printers by Printers window in Active Directory Users and Computers

snap-in, or Web browser.

• Managing printers includes assigning forms to paper trays, and setting a separator page.
• You can also pause, resume, and cancel documents in the print queue.
• Windows 2000 also lets you manage documents, pausing, resuming restarting and canceling

a document if there is a printing problem.

• Printer Pool to connect to multiple print devices.

Lesson 4: Printing and Active Directory Services

Active directory services is a distributed database shared by the domain controllers in a network.

Pertinent characteristics of the relationship between print servers and Active Directory services

include the following:

• Each print server is responsible for publishing its own printers in the Active Directory store.
• The print server does not have an affinity to any specific domain controller. It dynamically

finds a domain controller in the appropriate domain.

• When a printer is updated on the print server, the changes are automatically propagated through

Active Directory services to the Active Directory store.

• Printers are published in the Active Directory store as print Queue objects.

By default, printing is integrated with Active Directory services to work without administrative

intervention. The default behavior includes the following:

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• Any printer shared by a print server is published in Active Directory services. Administrative

access to the host computer is still required to install and share a printer.

• The print Queue object is placed in the print server’s computer object in the Active Directory

store.

Publishing Windows 2000 Printers

You can only publish printers that are shared.

The add printer wizard does not let you change this setting when you create a printer. Printers

that are added by using the Add Printer wizard are published by default.

NOTE: A print device connected to a universal serial bus (USB) port will likely be detected and

as a consequence a printer will be installed for it automatically. In this case, you must manually

share and publish the printer by using the Sharing tab.

Publishing Mechanism

The print server sends data asynchronously to Active Directory services. Initially it sends the

data after a one-second delay.

The printer is published to a random domain controller, so a query might not show the printer

until it has been replicated to all the domain controllers.

Pruning Orphans

When a printer is deleted from a print server, the corresponding Active Directory object is

removed. A program called an orphan pruner accomplished this by running on each domain

controller to periodically check for orphaned printer objects.

By default, if the orphan pruner cannot see a printer three times in a row at 8-hour intervals,

it assumes the entry is no longer valid and deletes it.

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Supporting Windows NT Printers

Printer that are on print servers running Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT 3.51 can be

published in Active Directory services by using the Active Directory Users and Computer

snap-in.

Lesson Summary:

• The print subsystem is tightly integrated with Active Directory services, making it possible to

search across a domain for printers at different locations.

• When any change occurs in the printer’s configuration, the Active Directory object is updated.

Lesson 5: Connecting to Network Printers

After you have set up the print server with all required printer drivers for the shared printers,

users on client computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Windows

2000 can easily make a connection and start printing.

Using the Add Printer Wizard

When you add and share a printer, by default, all users can make a connection to that printer

and print documents.

Client Computers running Windows 2000

By using the Add Printer wizard on client computers running Windows 2000, you can make

a connection to a printer with any of the following methods:

• Searching Active Directory services.
• Using the UNC, Universal Naming convention
• Browsing the network for the printer.

Client Computers Running Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT

On client computers running Windows 95, Window 98, or Windows NT the Add Printer

wizard allows you to enter a UNC name or to browse Network Neighborhood to locate

the printer.

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NOTE: You can also make a connection to a printer by using the Run command on the

Start menu. Type the UNC name of the printer.

Client Computers Running Other Microsoft Operating Systems

Users at client computers running Windows 3.x and Windows for Workgroups use Print

Manager instead of the Add Printer wizard to make a connection to a printer.

Net^use^1pt(x):^\\<printer_server>\<share>

Using a Web Browser

If you are using a computer running Windows 2000, you can make a connection to a printer

through your corporate intranet. You can type a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in your

Web browser, and you do not have to user the Add Printer Wizard.

There are two URLs you can make a connection to a printer by using a Web browser:

http:///<print_server>/<printers>

http://<print_server>/<share>

Downloading Printer Drivers

When users at client computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, or Windows

2000 make the first connection to a printer on the print server, the client computer automatically

downloads the printer driver.

Printer drivers are platform specific. Therefore, if you will be providing connect and download

printer driver support for multiple Windows NT platforms make sure to install the platform-

specific driver.

The Windows 2000 printer drivers are not compatible with Windows NT printer drivers.

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Lesson Summary:

• Clients running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 can use the Add
• Printer wizard to connect to a printer.
• Any Windows or MS-DOS computer can use the net use command to connect to a printer.
• When users at client computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows
• 2000 make the first connection to a printer on the print server, the client computer automatically

downloads the printer driver from the print server.