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Chapter 6
Printing

•  Creating A Printer Attached To A Parallel Port

•  Creating A Printer Attached To A Serial Port

•  Creating A Network-Attached Printer

•  Pausing A Printer

•  Connecting To A Printer

•  Changing The Windows Default Printer

•  Deleting Print Documents From The Printer

•  Purging A Printer Of All Documents

•  Using Separator Pages

•  Scheduling Printing

•  Printing Security

•  Printer Auditing

•  Configuring Print Forms

•  Configuring A Printer Pool

•  Configuring Multiple Printers On One Print Device

•  Configuring The Printer Priority

•  Connecting To A Printer From The Command Line

•  Installing Alternate Printer Drivers

Administrator’ Notes...

The Windows NT print system is a straightforward system to administrate and use. However, a number of points must be taken into consideration by the system administrator. One is that the terminology used by Microsoft to describe the print system can sometimes be confusing, especially if you have administrated other operating systems. Another potential problem area is that Windows NT printer drivers are processor- and version-dependent, which can cause some administrative problems.

Windows NT Printing Terminology

This section provides an overview of the main terms used to describe the Windows NT print system and points out where the confusion with these terms often occurs. The most important points are covered in more detail later in this chapter.

•  Print device—The print, or printing, device is the actual physical hardware that produces the print output. In most other operating systems, and in day-to-day life, this is known as the printer. This is not the case with Windows NT.

•  Printer—The printer is the Windows NT software component that connects Windows NT to the print device. This is generally known in other operating systems as the print queue.

•  Print spooler and spooling—The print spooler schedules, distributes, and controls print jobs. Spooling refers to the process of writing print jobs to a file, known as a spool file, where they wait to be printed. If the system fails, the print job is preserved in the spool file and can be printed when the system restarts. The print spooler can be controlled by using the Services icon in the Control Panel.

•  Print server—The print server is a computer or network device that connects to print devices and makes them available for use on the network. It can be either a Windows NT Workstation or Server, as well as a print device directly attached to the network.

•  Creating a printer—Creating a printer means to connect to either a network or locally attached printing device and installing the relevant print driver.

•  Connecting to a printer—Connecting to a printer means to connect to a printer being shared by a Windows NT print server.

•  Printer drivers—Printer drivers provide the necessary driver codes for a particular manufacturer’s printing device.

•  Print router—The print router is responsible for locating the printers, obtaining the correct printer driver for the client system, and routing print jobs to the correct spooler.

•  Print processor—The print processor converts the application print data into raw printable data that can be sent to the printer. If the data is already in this state—for example, in ASCII—no conversion is needed.

Administrating Printing

The print system is administrated by using the Printers window, as shown in Figure 6.1. Contained within this window is the Add Printer icon used to invoke the Add Printer Wizard, which guides you through the steps needed to create and connect to printers. Also displayed are icons of other, if any, printers that have already been created. Double-clicking these icons invokes the Printer Server window for the printer. Both the printer and print documents can be managed from this window.

Printer Security

One of the fundamental design policies of Windows NT is to treat all software components as objects. This also holds true for the print system. Because full security and auditing can be enabled on all Windows NT objects, the Windows NT administrator is provided with a flexible, secure print system. Table 6.1 shows the permissions that can be configured for printers and the functions this access allows. Not listed in this table is the No Access permission, which, as the name implies, is a blocking permission that overrides assigned permissions.

Figure 6.1  The Printers window.

The Print Operators group is defined in a Windows NT domain to manage the printers. By default, this group has no members.

Printer Drivers

Printer drivers can be a troublesome area for the Windows NT administrator. Often the printer driver is the first component that needs to be upgraded if any printing problems occur. Unfortunately, print devices are frequently the last computer resource to be upgraded and may be required to function for years. You might well find that a printer driver is not supplied with Windows NT for your particular print device. In that case, you’ll need to obtain a driver from the hardware manufacturer.

Printer drivers are not compatible among different processor type. For instance, a printer driver for an Intel x86 platform will not work on a RISC-based system, and vice versa. At first glance, this might not seem to be much of a problem, because you wouldn’t need to use an Intel printer driver on a RISC box. However, as we examine more closely the way Windows NT handles remote printing, you will see where the problem occurs.