Installing a Network Printer

It is a common practice to share a single print device with numerous clients. Often, a separate print server is used, such as an HP Jet Direct print server, rather than a Windows Server. Where this is the case, all computers on the network would install network printers and there would be no local printers. A network printer is a print device that has been shared and made available to the network. However, a printer on the network can be managed using Windows Server 2003 by enabling the Print Server role and/or configuring a server as a print server. To install a network printer, click Add Printer in the Printers and Faxes applet to start the Add Printer Wizard. When asked whether to install a local printer or a network printer, select network printer and click Next. You will have the option of searching Active Directory for a printer or typing in the share name if known. The wizard will locate the network printer and download and install the appropriate drivers. A network printer can be printed to by users, but can only be managed at the local computer or print server it is attached to. Installing a Local Printer If a local printer is installed, the computer becomes a print server for that printer and will receive print jobs for processing on the attached print device. A local printer can also be managed and additional features such as printer pooling and print priorities can be implemented. Installing a Local Printer In this exercise, you will install a local printer. It is not necessary to have a print device. You can “fake” installing a printer. The printer that you install in this exercise will then be used to demonstrate the additional features of Windows Server 2003 printing. 1. Click Start Printers and Faxes to open the Printers and Faxes applet. 2. Double-click Add Printer to start the Add Printer Wizard. Click Next. 3. Select “Local printer attached to this computer.” 4. Uncheck the box next to “Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer,” and click Next. 5. Select “Use the following port” and select LPT1, and click Next, 6. Select the manufacturer and model of the printer to install. Select HP as the manufacturer and HP Color LaserJet 4500 for the model Click Next. 7. Enter HP Color Laser for the printer name. Click Next. 8. Select Share Name and type hpclaser in the name field. Click Next. 9. Enter a location and comment for the printer. Choose a floor number or building number for the location. Use your imagination for the comment field. Click Next. 10. Select No when asked if you want to print a test page. (You can say Yes, you just won’t actually be able to print anything out.) 11. Click Finish to complete the Add Printer Wizard. 12. Click Start All Programs Accessories and select WordPad. 13. Click File Print to open the Print dialog box. You should see the printer that you just installed available to print to. Click Cancel and close WordPad. Configuring Printers You must understand how to properly configure a printer for different printing scenarios. The following sections describe how to install additional ports, secure printers using permissions, set up printer pooling, implement print priorities and availability, and set up additional drivers on a printer. Troubleshooting Printers Most print problems stem from incorrect printer drivers being loaded. If a user prints a document using an incorrect printer driver, the print job will appear garbled or the print job will print one character on each page. To correct these problems, update the printer driver. The easiest way to update printer drivers on client machines is to first add the appropriate driver on the server, as discussed previously in this section. Then when users connect to the print server, the correct driver will automatically be installed.