Preventing users changing print preferences

[caffrey]

I've been asked to stop users from changing default print preferences on a colour printer, so that they print only in b&w.

Personally for the work involved I'd prefer this to be a management issue, but hey I press the buttons.

How do you do this ? (it's a Konica C252)

[chazzy2501]

I don't know if thats possible, the print servers ACL can limit some actions? I do believe you can download a b&w driver for your printer for this issue though. If you had print management software ppopup or papercut it'd be easy.

[SYNACK]

If you don't give them the manage printers right then their changes will only apply to them, as above look for a bw only driver for it.

[caffrey]

Don't think there are any B&W drivers for it, I believe there's some reg hack you can do to stop it but I'd rather not go down that path if I can help it.

[chazzy2501]

A websearch tells me that a mono driver does exist but you'll need someone with techncian access to Konicas site. You could ask your printer support (if you lease) or drop Konica an email.

[LeMarchand]

I didn't set it up, but one of my sites has the same printer listed as "Copier_BW" and "Copier_Colour" and the kids can only print to the former. Not on site until later in the week (and unlikely to have time to test then) so I'm not sure if they can change to colour if they try.

[caffrey]

It's only available to staff not students anyway, I think SLT want to delegate one member of staff to print out in colour, so that's possible (deploy B&W printer to those machines and colour to one specific machine) shame there's no easier way to stop it (maybe I should suggest a lump of 2x2?)

[sted]

if its a copier could you not just set it to require a code for colour printing but not for b&w?

[caffrey]

I don't think it has that capability, other option is just to remove the printer.....

[caffrey]

Thanks everyone, managed to get it working using a HP Universal PCL5 driver, haven't launched it yet in fear of the flak

[lmgtfy]

If you get driver issues with using the HP universal driver which you may do, the way we do it here is setup the printing defaults on the server for B+W and then do a Impero title check that looks for "Printing Preferences..." I think just for students so if they are sneaky and go looking for the colour settings it kills the window then informs the teacher :-)