Installing and Configuring Printers on Windows Servers Part 3

Posted by arlene

Printer Properties

You can access the properties page for any printer by using either of the following:

In the Printers folder, highlight the printer you want to work with and choose File, Properties.

In the Printers folder, double-click the printer you want to work with. From the dialog box that appears, select Printers, Properties.

The properties page for a printer is divided into six property sheets that enable you to control a wide variety of properties for each printer on an individual basis:

• General
• Ports
• Scheduling
• Sharing
• Security
• Device Settings

The General tab enables you to modify informational text about the printer that users can view, such as the location of the printer. You also can use this tab to select an existing separator page or create a new separator page. Separator pages can be used to print a page before each user’s job so that it’s easy for an operator to separate each print job on a high-volume printer used by many users. Separatorpages also can be used to send printer-specific codes to a printer that determines how it prints the document. Windows NT Server comes with three separator pages designed for this purpose:

• PSCRIPT.SEP—This separator page changes the printer into PostScript mode. No actual separator page is printed.
• SYSPRINT.SEP—This page also switches a printer into PostScript mode but does print a separator page.
• PCL.SEP—Thispage switches the printer into PCL mode (HP’s Printer Control Language) and prints a separator page.

You can design your own separator pages using escape codes to include information such as the user’s name, print job number, date, and any additional text you want on the page.

You also can print a test page from the General tab when troubleshooting the printer. Another useful feature on this page is the New Driver button, which you can use to load an updated printer driver. This might be necessary when a manufacturer releases a printer driver that is more current than the one found on the Windows NT Server source CDs.

The Ports tab is similar to the ports display that you see when you create a printer or when you view ports using the Print Server properties page. Here, however, you can change the port used by this printer, which comes in handy when a printer is moved to a new location and a new network connection is required. You don’t have to delete and re-create the printer; just go to the Ports tab and select or create the new port after the printer has been moved. Then, go back to the General tab and print a test page to determine whether the port has been successfully created.

The Scheduling tab enables you to set the time of day that a printer is available for use. Generally, a printer is available 24 hours per day, but you can use this tab to change that if you need to. Note that users can still send print jobs to a printer outside its available time range. Their documents are stored and then printed when the printer is available for use. If you allow users to schedule jobs to be printed later, you also must be aware of the disk space that will be used for spooling the documents that must wait. For large files, such as those containing complex graphics, you’ll need a lot of space.

This feature can be used to force certain print jobs, such as lengthy reports, to be delayed until after- hours when ordinary users no longer need the printer. For example, you can set up several logical printers. You can make one logical printer available to your normal workday users and set another to allow printing after hours. Applications that produce voluminous print jobs can send their documents to this latter printer, and users can retrieve their documents the next morning when they come into work.

The Scheduling tab enables you to specify several other configuration options:

• Spool Print Documents So the Program Finishes Printing Faster—This allows the application to send a print job quickly because the output is directed to a spooler file rather than directly to the physical printer. Generally, it takes longer to send a job directly to the printer unless it has enough memory to buffer the entire print job.

• Print Directly to the Printer—Thisis the opposite of the preceding option. An application can stall until the printer has finished receiving the entire print job from the user.

• Hold Mismatched Documents—This option retains a print job that does not match the current printer settings instead of discarding it. You then can change the printer or disable this option to cause the document to print.

• Print Spooled Documents First—Generally a spooled print job begins to print before the document has been completely spooled to a temporary file. This option specifies that jobs already completely written to the spool file will print before those that are still spooling. This setting can override the priority of a spooling print job and allow a completely spooled lower priority job to print first.

• Keep Documents After They Have Printed—This setting causes spooled print jobs to remain in the spool directory after they have printed. This can be useful for troubleshooting print problems. You can look at the original print job and possibly send it to another printer to determine whether the original printer is exhibiting unusual behavior when trying to print.

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