Using a Windows XP Client as a Print Server

[edie209]

I use a script that looks at at the PC's name and compares it to an answer file to see what printer should be the default printer. That works fine as long as the printer is shared on the server as a local printer or via a print server.

Now we have Epson C84 printers in every classroom with even more consumables so they need to be used. If I share the printer locally on the client PC the script won't pick up the printer. I should say at this point all client PC's are DHCP. So I gave the client PC a static IP adress and then shared the printer from the server ie local printer, create new port, and enter the IP of the machine now this works the script then points the pc to the printer on log on but I am unable to actually print. I can see the printer, the prints waiting to be printed I can even delete them but just not print.

This is possible without a physical print server isnt it?

[Geoff]

XP Pro is limited to 10 inbound connections. Your machines will be connecting to setup the printer on startup/login (depending on how your script works). This'll hang printouts until these connections have cleared and there are less than 10 connections. Conceivably this can be several hours.

You have several ways round this:

1) A Linux print server.
2) An old Win9x machine as a print server.
3) A dedicated hardware print server
4) Get rid of your desktop based printers and get one or more decent network printer(s).

[SimpleSi]

So I gave the client PC a static IP adress and then shared the printer from the server ie local printer, create new port, and enter the IP of the machine now this works the script then points the pc to the printer on log on but I am unable to actually print.

Where does it say in the book that this would work at all


regards

Simon

[mark]

I use the printUI.dll method as a logon script on the local machine - in rooms with 10 or less machines (he doesn't say he connects to more Geoff) - we have some printers without print servers - we just think of this as a stop gap measure - scripting centrally is problematic as the script slows down if PCs are not turned on - scripting locally gets around this nicely.

[kiran]

We have now invested in mini Netgear USB Print Server's which are quite good!!!

I don't know what experiences other people have had of these, but they work fine although they need a power supply.

[ajbritton]

You could route all your printing via a server as follows;

1 - Share the printer on the PC (eg \\PC01\printer1)
2 - Create a new port on the server (\\PC01\printer1)
3 - Install a new 'local' printer on the server attached to port \\PC01\printer1
4 - Share the new printer on the server \\server\printer1
5 - Connect clients to the printer on the server

Print jobs will all route via the queue on the server. This way it will only be the server sending jobs out to PC01 (gets around the max 10 connections limit).

[edie209]

ajbritton I am going to try this we only have a maximum of 6 pc's in the classrooms with these printers, so your solution looks really good I will post back tomorrow with the results.

Thanks

[SimpleSi]

@aj

What a clever idea

Have you used this setup under load conditions?

regards

Simon

[Geoff]

I'm not sure that works. When I tried it on my W2k3 server to get round exactly this issue, Windows 'shortcuts' the roundabout way the printer has been set up and just attempts to print directly to the other XP client. You can verify this by seeing where the port is configured to go to on the client PC.

[ajbritton]

@Geoff: Don't believe your eyes. I know what you mean, that when you are logged on to a PC and look at the properties of a network connected printer, the ports shown are exactly the same as you would see if you were at the server. You will see the same thing though for printers which are directly connected to the server, or via any other remote print server. Windows certainly doesn't shortcut the connection to other remote print devices, so I see no reason why it should do so in this case. One way to prove this would be to firewall the PC hosting the printer and only allow incoming connections from the server hosting the print queue.

[edie209]

Well I have been playing with this a day now. The easy bit is setting up the Printer as AJ describes above. I can then send a test page from the server no problem, but on a PC I just get an error "unable to print" ths does not matter if I am logged in as admin or as a user.

Very strange unless this is the Max 10 inbound connections that Geoff was on about causing the problem.

[ajbritton]

Anything in the event logs?

[edie209]

Took a while to manage to get back to this one busy days

Wel I had a look in the event logs and this is what I am getting

 Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Print
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    6161
Date:        07/12/2006
Time:        15:44:11
User:        DOMAIN\user
Computer:    SERVER
Description:
The document Microsoft Word - example.doc owned by user failed to print on printer Science EPSON Stylus C84. Data type: NT EMF 1.008. Size of the spool file in bytes: 46360. Number of bytes printed: 0. Total number of pages in the document: 1. Number of pages printed: 0. Client machine: \\PC-01. Win32 error code returned by the print processor: 5. Access is denied.
 
 
For more information, see Help and Support Center at [url]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp[/url]. 
  

I have popped over to eventid.net and found many solutions including this one

From a newsgroup post: "Please grant Full Control permissions to the C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\ directory".

Have you experienced this error? as I said before I am find when logged in with admin rights, so I am going to try the above and see that works in the morning unless you have any solution.

[ajbritton]

Which machine was this error found on? Source of print job, server or printer host?

[edie209]

Sorry I should have said ops:

The error was found on the server