Printers in Microsoft Networking
From WIGITAL Computer Help
In understanding Printers in a Microsoft networking environment it is important to understand the difference between a print device and a Printer object.
- print device = a physical printer
- Printer = a Printer object related to virtually by the Operating System
A Printer is considered a software object. The Printer software object controls the behavior of the hardware print device.
- A Printer object controls the print device by managing driver files and storing the print device settings
- A Printer object maintains a separate printer queue for each print device
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Printer Pooling
Printer Pooling can be described most simply as:
- Assigning multiple print devices to the ports used by a single Printer object
- Documents in print jobs are then distributed evenly across the print devices
To enable Printer Pooling
- GO TO the Printer object
- right-click and select Properties
- select the Ports tab
- check the box Enable Printer Pooling
If you have multiple print devices that are the same make and model, printer pooling will allow the devices to share the same print queue. Printer Pooling allows multiple print jobs to be shared among a pool of print devices. In this scenario, a Windows Computer is assigned the role of Print Server. Multiple print devices are connected to the Print Server Computer and pooled together by assigning multiple ports to a single Printer object. Each print job that is sent to the Printer Pool is then even distributed to the next available printer. This scenario is common on large organizations with very large print capacities and whom often have dedicated print rooms and staff responsible for the print jobs and despersion of documents.
Using Multiple Printer objects
In Windowss multiple Printer object(s) are allowed for a single print device
If different Groups need different settings to the same print device, multiple printer objects can be used to assign different premission to the printer objects. Users are assigned to different Groups, the Groups are then assigned to the different Printer objects based on the desired permissions settings. Using this technique is possible with only a single print device because the Printer object (which is a software object) can be assigned unique explicit permissions for as many Printer objects as you create.
NOTE: It is important to be careful in assigning the appropriate Printer object to the appropriate Users when using this technique.
Troubleshooting Printers
Print Spooler service
The management of print queue communication with the print device is handled by the Print Spooler service (Spooler).
If you cannot clear a print job from a print queue
- GO TO the Services console
- right-click the Print Spooler service
- Stop the Print Spooler service
- Delete the spooled print jobs from the queue
- Restart the Print Spooler service
