Printer properties control the settings for an individual printer. You can access a printer's properties from the Printers And Faxes folder. In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer and select Properties. If you want to configure a printer on a remote print server, start Windows Explorer, expand My Network Places, and navigate to the Printers And Faxes folder of the remote print server. You can then right-click the printer and select Properties.
Note
The specific properties displayed depend to some extent on the make and model of printer you are working with. Because of this, some of the settings described below won't necessarily apply to all printers.
To help users find printers and ensure that they don't have to waste time trying to configure default settings such as paper size and paper tray to use, you should take a close look at the general properties, printing preferences, and document defaults assigned to a printer after you install it. Although this will take you a few minutes to go through, it will save users much more time, especially when you consider that this is something that every user in the organization would otherwise have to do.
As Figure 29-31 shows, the general settings are accessed from the General tab of the printer's Properties dialog box.
In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and then select Properties. In the General tab, you can view or change the following options:
Local printer name The name of the printer on the print server
Location The location description of the printer
Comment An additional comment about the printer
To make sure the printer is ready for use, you should next go through the printing preferences and device settings to configure the settings that will be used by default on the printer. Click Printing Preferences in the lower portion of the General tab. Check the settings in the following tabs:
Layout Controls the paper orientation and page order for printing
Paper/Quality Controls the paper source (tray), the media (paper type), and the printing preference for black and white or color
In the Printing Preferences dialog box, click OK. Then in the printer's Properties dialog box, click the Device Settings tab, as shown in Figure 29-32. Check the following device settings and change them as necessary and applicable to your printer:
Form To Tray Assignment Form To Tray Assignment options ensure the printer trays are configured for the proper paper types. Selecting a tray entry highlights it and displays a selection list that you can use to set the paper type for the tray.
Job Timeout Job Timeout optimizes the print job wait times. Job Timeout specifies the maximum amount of time the printer allows for a job to get from the computer to the printer. If this time is exceeded, the printer will stop trying to print the document. The default value is 0, which means the printer will continue trying to print a document indefinitely. To change this value, select Job Timeout, and then type a new timeout.
Wait Timeout Wait Timeout optimizes in-process printing wait times. Wait Timeout specifies how long the printer waits for additional information from the printer. If this time elapses, the printer stops trying to print the document and prints an error message. Typically, the default wait timeout is 300 seconds. Although this is sufficient for most types of print jobs, a print server that is under a heavy load or processing very complex documents might exceed this. If you notice that the printer unexpectedly stops printing photos, CAD drawings, digital art, or other types of complex documents, try increasing the wait timeout to resolve this problem. To change this value, select Wait Timeout, then type a new timeout.
Installed Memory/Installable Options Installed Memory (sometimes known as Installable Options) tells the computer about the amount of memory installed on the printer. Although you should never use a value less than the default setting for the printer, you can use this option to tell the print server about additional RAM that you installed on the printer. This ensures the computer knows the extra RAM is available. To change this value, select Installed Memory, then choose the appropriate value on the selection list.
In secure environments, it might be necessary to set a watermark in the background of every page that is printed. A watermark is a word or phrase, such as DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, or TOP SECRET, that is printed lightly in the background of every page using a very large font size—typically 72-point Courier. If your printer supports this feature, you can print the watermark in the background of every page or only the first page of a document.
To clear or set a default watermark for all printed documents, follow these steps:
In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and select Properties. In the General tab, click Printing Preferences. Then in the Printing Preferences dialog box, select the Overlays tab.
To clear a default watermark, select None as the watermark type. Afterward, click OK and skip the remaining steps.
To set a default watermark, select a watermark type. Available types include CONFIDENTIAL, COPY, DRAFT, FINAL, ORIGINAL, and PROOF.
To create a new watermark, click Add, then use the Watermarks dialog box to set the watermark name, text, and options. The watermark text sets the word or phrase that will be printed lightly in the background.
To set the watermark on the first page only, select First Page Only.
Click OK.
When a print server runs Windows Server 2003, print drivers can be installed and updated automatically on clients as discussed in the section entitled "Understanding Windows Server 2003 Print Services" earlier in this chapter. A client downloads print drivers the first time it accesses a printer and any time the print drivers have been updated.
Note
The drivers that are available for a printer depend on when the printer was installed and whether the system was upgraded from Windows NT 4. If the system was upgraded from Windows NT 4 and the printer was installed prior to the upgrade, level 2 kernel-mode drivers are installed and available to clients. Otherwise, a printer should have level 3 usermode drivers installed and available to clients. Level 2 print drivers are needed to support Windows NT 4 clients. Level 3 print drivers are needed to support Windows 2000 or later clients.
By default, printers installed on a Windows Server 2003 network support only Windows NT 4 or later with kernel-mode drivers or Windows 2000 or later with user-mode drivers. Four types of drivers can be made available to clients for automatic download:
Itanium-based drivers Used on 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems that use the Intel Itanium processor architecture
x86 user-mode drivers Used on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003
x86 kernel-mode drivers Used on Windows NT 4
x86 desktop drivers Used by Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me clients
You confirm and configure print driver availability on a per-printer basis by following these steps:
In Control Panel, access Printers And Faxes, then right-click the printer you want to work with, and then select Properties.
In the Properties dialog box, select the Sharing tab, and then click Additional Drivers. This displays the Additional Drivers dialog box, as shown in Figure 29-33.
Select the option for any client drivers to be installed, and then click OK.
To install additional print drivers for clients, you need access to the installation files for the appropriate driver version either on the network or on CD.
Once you've installed the print drivers for clients, clients will download them when they first connect to the print server. If you update the drivers, all clients except those running Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me will get the updated drivers automatically. Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me clients do not automatically check for updated drivers and must be updated manually.
When you set up a printer, you are given the chance to share it. If you share a printer, it is published in Active Directory automatically. Published printers can be searched for by users in a variety of ways, including when a user is attempting to connect to a network printer using the Add Printer Wizard. You can check or change the printer sharing and publishing options using the Sharing tab of the printer's Properties dialog box. In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and then select Properties.
In the Sharing tab, you have the following options, as shown in Figure 29-34:
Do Not Share This Printer Selecting this option stops printer sharing and makes the printer available only as a local printer to users who log on to the computer.
Share This Printer Selecting this option shares the printer so that it is accessible to users as discussed in the section entitled "Connecting Users to Shared Printers" earlier in this chapter.
List In The Directory For a shared printer, selecting this option lists the printer in Active Directory, and clearing the option removes the listing from Active Directory.
A printer queue is a logical print device. You can have one logical print device associated with a printer, or you can have multiple logical print devices associated with a printer. It is the latter option that gives you more flexibility and can help improve printing in general, especially if you create different logical print devices for different purposes and educate users how they should be used. With multiple logical print devices, you can use print queue priority and scheduling settings to control how and when a logical print device is used.
Queue priority lets you prioritize printing based on the type of document being printed. Queue scheduling lets you schedule when documents in a queue can be printed—it doesn't restrict spooling to the queue, only printing from the queue. Print queue priority and scheduling settings can be used separately or together. Consider the following scenarios:
A printer has a normal queue and a priority queue You configure the normal queue so that it can be used for all routine print jobs. You configure the priority queue so that it is used for all urgent print jobs. Because the priority queue has a higher priority than the normal queue, any documents printed to the priority queue are printed before and preempt documents in the normal queue. To ensure the priority queue isn't abused, you might want to restrict access to those groups or individuals that actually have priority printing needs on a printer.
A printer has a normal queue and a scheduled bulk queue You configure the normal queue so that it can be used any time for all routine print jobs. You configure the bulk print queue so that it is used for large documents and only after hours or during nonpeak hours. Any document spooled to the normal queue can be printed immediately. Any document spooled to the bulk queue is printed only within the scheduled availability hours, which keeps large documents from tying up the printer and causing a lengthy backup for other documents during peak usage times. If you set the priority of the bulk queue to be lower than that of the normal queue, the normal queue will always have priority.
To set printer availability schedule and priority, follow these steps:
In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and then select Properties. Then select the Advanced tab, as shown in Figure 29-35.
Printers are either always available or available only during the hours specified. Select Always Available to make the printer available at all times, or select Available From to set specific hours of operation.
Use the Priority box to set the default priority for the print queue. The priority range goes from 1, which is the lowest priority, to 99, which is the highest priority. Print jobs always print in order of priority, and jobs with higher priority print before jobs with lower priority. The priority you use is assigned to all print jobs spooled to this printer.
If you are configuring a priority queue, select the Security tab, and configure permissions to allow only those users and groups that you want to print at this priority. Remove or deny print permissions for users and groups that should have a different priority level. These users will use the normal priority queue that you've configured for the printer. If you haven't configured one yet, do so now.
When you are finished, click OK. Repeat this process for all other logical print devices you configured for this printer.
Using a technique called printer pooling, a single logical print device can also be associated with multiple physical print devices. In this configuration, you have one print queue but multiple printers and jobs are sent to the first available physical printer. To take advantage of printer spooling, the printers must use the same printer driver. Typically, this means they must be from the same manufacturer and have the same model. They must also have the same amount of memory installed.
Figure 29-36 shows an example of printer pooling. As the figure shows, the advantage of printer pooling is that users see a single print queue but multiple printers are available to handle their print jobs. Behind the scenes, administrators are free to add or remove physical printers without affecting the users' configuration.
Printer pooling is useful in several scenarios:
Print-capacity scaling To scale print capacity, you can place two, three, four, or more identical printers side by side and then use printer pooling to effectively double, triple, quadruple, or more your printing capacity. In this arrangement, users have one queue for printing to these printers, and the only changes you must make are on the print server. On the print server, you enable printer pooling so that the first available printer prints a document.
Printer maintenance and replacement Printer pooling can facilitate printer maintenance and replacement as well. If you must maintain or repair a printer that is part of a printer pool, you can take it offline whenever necessary without impacting print operations. Users will still be able to print to the print queue and the additional printers in the pool will handle printing for their documents.
Tip
Cluster the print server
Printer pooling provides high availability and fault tolerance for the printers themselves. It doesn't provide high availability or fault tolerance for the print server. If a group of users requires high performance and high reliability, you can set up a print cluster as discussed in the section entitled "Managing Server Clusters and Their Resources". Setting up a print cluster provides additional capacity and fault tolerance should one of the print servers stop responding.
You can configure printer pooling by following these steps:
Printer pooling is managed using a single logical print device and multiple ports. This means you must add a printer so that it uses a particular port and then add one additional port for each additional physical print device you want to pool.
After you set up the printer and configure additional ports, access the printer's Properties dialog box. In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and select Properties. Then select the Ports tab, as shown in Figure 29-37.
Select Enable Printer Pooling, and then select all the ports to which printers in the pool are attached. These ports can be local ports as well as network ports. As long as the physical print devices to which they connect are all identical, meaning they are from the same manufacturer, have the same model, and have the same amount of memory installed.
When you are finished configuring printer pooling, click OK.
Tip
Put pooled printers next to each other and consider using separator pages
Printer pooling works best when the pooled printers are all in the same location. You might want to put the printers back to back or side by side. It also helps if you use separator pages. Separator pages help to keep print jobs organized and make it easier for users to identify which printouts are theirs.
The way print spooling is configured on a printer affects how clients perceive printing performance and the actual printing options. You can configure printers to start printing immediately after a print job is received or to wait until the last page is spooled. If a print server's drives are full or can't be written to, you can change printer spooling settings so clients can print directly. Although this can slow printing down on a busy printer, it allows clients to continue printing. Other spooling options allow you to keep printed documents for faster reprinting and to hold mismatched documents so that jobs using alternate types of paper or envelopes don't cause the printer to stop and wait.
To configure print spooling options, access the printer's Properties dialog box. In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and select Properties. Then select the Advanced tab, as shown previously in Figure 29-35. You can now use the following options to configure print spooling:
Spool Print Documents So Program Finishes Printing Faster Spools print jobs to the print server, allowing clients to finish faster so they can perform other tasks.
Start Printing After Last Page Is Spooled Ensures that the entire document is spooled to the print server and available to the printer when printing begins. This option gives more control over the print job. If printing is canceled or not completed, the job won't be printed. If a higher-priority job becomes available, it will print first.
Start Printing Immediately Reduces the time it takes to print by allowing the printing to begin immediately when the print device isn't already in use. This option is preferred if you want print jobs to be completed faster and if you want to ensure that the client finishes faster.
Print Directly To The Printer Turns off spooling completely and documents are sent directly to the printer. This option can seriously degrade print performance. Only use this option if there is a problem writing to the spool folder and you want to ensure printing can continue.
Hold Mismatched Documents Holds documents that don't match the setup for the print device without affecting other documents in the print queue. This speeds up the overall printing throughput by keeping the printer from waiting for alternate paper and envelope types. For example, if a user prints a transparency, rather than stopping printing and waiting for the user to insert transparency paper, the printer holds the document and continues printing.
Print Spooled Documents First Allows jobs that have completed spooling to print before jobs in the process of spooling without regard to priority. The document with the highest priority that is already spooled will print even if a higher-priority document is in the process of spooling. This speeds up the overall printing throughput by keeping the printer from waiting for documents that are in the process of spooling.
Keep Printed Documents Keeps a copy of documents in the print queue in case users need to print the same document again. When selected, if a user reprints a document that's already in the queue, the document can be taken directly from the queue rather than having to be transferred and spooled again. In most cases, you'll want to consider using this option only when users print specialty types of documents that can take a long time to transfer and spool. Enabling this option substantially increases the amount of disk space required for spooling.
Enable Advanced Printing Features Enables advanced printing features for metafile (EMF) spooling, including Page Order, Booklet Printing, and Pages Per Sheet. Typically, this option is enabled because metafile spooling is desired.
Every printer has a print processor. The default print processor for Windows systems is Winprint. Other print processors can be installed when you set up a printer. The print processor and the default data type for the processor determine how much processing the printer performs. As discussed previously, the RAW data type is processed on the client and minimally processed on the print server. The EMF data type is sent to the print server for processing.
Generally speaking, you do not need to change either the print processor or the default data type. However, if you want to determine the print processor and default data type used by a printer, you can access the printer's Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab, and then click Print Processor. This displays the Print Processor dialog box. As shown in Figure 29-38, the current print processor and default data type are selected and highlighted by default.
On a busy printer or when you use printer pooling, you might need some help keeping print jobs organized so that users can easily find their print jobs among other print jobs. This is where separator pages come in handy. Separator pages are used at the beginning of each print job to help identify the related document and who printed it.
By default, printers don't use separator pages. If you want to use separator pages, you must configure them on a per-printer (logical print device) basis. Windows Server 2003 includes four default separator pages. These default separator pages are stored in the %SystemRoot%System32 folder and are defined using standard American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text. This means you can view and edit them using any standard text editor, including Notepad.
The default separator pages include the following types:
Pcl.sep Sets the print device to PCL mode and prints a separator page before each document. The separator page shows the print job ID, date, and time. The Pcl.sep file uses the PCL page definition language and has the following contents:
H1BL%-12345X@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=PCL H1BL&l1T MBSNU ULJob : I ULDate: D ULTime: T E
Pscript.sep Sets a dual-language printer to PostScript mode but doesn't print a separator page. The Pscript.sep file uses the PostScript page definition language and has the following contents:
H1BL%-12345X@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=POSTSCRIPT
Sysprint.sep Sets the print device to PostScript mode and prints a separator page before each document. The separator page has banner text to help easily identify who printed the document and when. The Sysprint.sep file uses the PostScript page definition language. The key definition assignments are the following:
@L/name (@N@L) def @L/jobid(@I@L) def @L/date (@D@L) def @L/time (@T@L) def
Sysprtj.sep Sets the print device to PostScript mode and prints a separator page before each document. The Sysprtj.sep file uses the PostScript page definition language and is essentially an alternate version of the Sysprint.sep that uses a different version of the banner text.
Other separator pages can be installed in the %SystemRoot%System32 folder as well. Some printers install their own separator pages. Typically, they do this because they can't use any of the standard separator pages. For example, Minolta QMS MagiColor Laser printers install their own separator page. The default name of this separator page is Msep01_b.sep. The contents of this file are as follows:
MBSNU ULJob : I ULDate: D ULTime: T E
Here, the user name is printing in banner text and then job ID, date, and time are printed in standard text. It is important to know what the definitions look like in a separator page because all separator pages can be customized. The way you do this is to modify existing definitions or add definitions.
To use one of the default separator pages, access the printer's Properties dialog box, select the Advanced tab, and then click Separator Page. In the Separator Page dialog box, shown in Figure 29-39, click Browse. This opens a Find dialog box in the %SystemRoot%System32 folder so you can easily choose available separator pages. Click a separator page that uses the same page description language as the printer, and then click Open. Afterward, in the Separator Page dialog box, click OK.
Tip
Test the separator page
After you select a separator page, you should print a test document to ensure printing works as expected. To do this, click Print Test Page in the General tab of the printer's Properties dialog box. If there's any printing error, you've chosen an incompatible separator page and will need to try a different one.
You can customize separator pages for your organization. Although PCL, PostScript, and other types of separator pages use a different syntax, they all use the same variables. These variables are summarized in Table 29-2.
Table 29-2. Separator Page Variables
Variable | Usage |
|---|---|
B | Turns on banner printing of text for which each character is block printed using pound signs (#) until you exit banner printing with the U variable. |
D | Prints the date the document was printed using the default date format. |
E | Inserts a page break. Typically used at the end of the separator page so that the document starts printing on a new sheet of paper. |
Ffilepath | Prints the contents of the specified text file to the separator page. The specified file must contain only text and the formatting of the text is not retained. |
Hnn | Sets a printer-specific code, which is used to control printer functions. Refer to the printer manual for control codes that might be available. |
I | Prints the job ID. The job ID is set when a document is spooled to the printer. |
Ltext | Prints the literal text following the variable until the next escape code or variable is reached. |
L% | Marks the start of comment text that isn't printed. The next escape code or variable marks the end of the comment. |
M | Turns on emphasis (bold) print. Switch off with S. |
N | Prints the logon name of the user who submitted the print job. |
N | Skips n lines, where n is a number from 0 to 9. |
S | Switches off emphasis (bold). |
T | Prints the time the document was printed using the default time format. |
U | Turns off banner text printing. |
Wnn | Sets the line character width. Any lines with more characters than the specified width are truncated. The default width is 80 characters. |
Knowing the available variables and their meaning, you can now examine the separator page listings shown previously to see exactly what they are doing.
Now that we know what the variables mean, let's take another look at Pcl.sep:
The first line sets the escape code for the separator page:
On the second and third lines, the separator page uses control codes to set the page description language to PCL:
H1BL%-12345X@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE=PCL H1BL&l1T
On the fourth line, the separator page switches to bold banner text mode and then prints the name of the logon user:
MBSNU
On lines 5 through 8, the separator page prints literal text followed by a value—either the job ID, date, or time:
ULJob : I ULDate: D ULTime: T
On the last line, the separator page inserts a page break:
E
The PostScript separator pages are a bit more difficult to follow but have similar definitions. With PostScript, @ typically is used as an escape character to mark the start of variables instead of . However, the first line of the separator page specifies the escape code that will be used.
With both PCL and PostScript, you have two options for customizing separator pages: you can either try to edit the existing separator pages or create your own. Before you edit an existing separator page, you should make a backup copy and work with the copy instead of the original file. If you elect to make your own separator page, you can do so using Notepad.
When you start from scratch, you can use either and @ as escape codes or $. Set the escape code on the first line of the document and stick with the escape code you start with. With that in mind, if you want to print out the user name, date, and time in bold banner text, you would create a separator page with the following contents:
$ $M$B$S$N$U $M$B$S$D$U $M$B$S$T$U $E
You would then save the file to the %SystemRoot%System32 folder and name it with the .sep extension, such as Working.sep. To use the custom separator page, set it as the one to use as discussed previously.
With more and more color printers being used, it has become increasingly important to ensure color printers accurately reproduce colors. Windows Server 2003 supports Integrated Color Management (ICM). ICM uses color profiles to ensure colors are printed consistently. By default, Windows chooses the best color profile based on what is being printed.
By default, Windows includes only a few color profiles. When you install a color printer or graphics software on a computer, additional color profiles typically are installed. All color profiles are stored in the %SystemRoot%System32SpoolDriversColor folder. In most cases, color profiles installed with a printer are set as the defaults to use.
To view or configure color profiles, follow these steps:
In the Printers And Faxes window, right-click the printer, and select Properties. Then select the Color Management tab, as shown in Figure 29-40.
Select the Automatic option to have Windows choose the best color profile.
To set a color profile to use manually, select Manual, and then select a profile from the list of available profiles or click Add to add an additional profile association for the printer. Any profile selected in the profile list is used as the current profile. To make the current profile the default profile for the printer, click Set As Default.
Click OK.
Tip
Copy needed color profiles to the print server
Color profiles available to users, such as graphic designers using Adobe PhotoShop, are installed with the software. These profiles will exist on the user's desktop but not on the print server. To make the profiles available for use, you can copy available profiles from a user's desktop to the print server.