Print Services Changes for Windows Server 2003

Print Services Changes for Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003 has built-in support for over 3,800 printer drivers, including both 32-bit and 64-bit printer drivers. Support for 64-bit printer drivers is important because systems running 64-bit editions of Windows need 64-bit drivers. As with previous versions of Windows, printer drivers are installed automatically on clients when they first try to print to a new printer device on a print server.

In Microsoft Windows NT 4, all printer drivers operate in kernel mode and are said to be version 2 drivers. With a kernel-mode driver, an error with a printer driver can cause the server to crash. This happens because the driver is running in the operating system kernel process. In Windows 2000 and later, printer drivers operate in user mode and support kernel-mode drivers only for backward compatibility. User-mode drivers are referred to as version 3 drivers.

User-mode drivers operate in a process separate from the operating system kernel process. An error in a user-mode driver affects only its related process. Typically, this means the Print Spooler process hangs up and has to be restarted. Because Windows Server 2003 is configured by default to restart the Print Spooler process automatically within 1 minute if it stops with an error or hangs up, no administrator action is required.

Windows 2000 and later also use the Microsoft Universal Printer Driver (Unidrv) rather than the Raster Device Driver (Rasdd) interface, which was used in Windows NT 4. The Universal Printer Driver provides core printing functions that printer driver manufacturers can use. These functions are implemented in two print engines:

  • Unidrv.dll Provides the core printing functions for PCL print devices. Uses EMFformatted files.

  • PScript5.dll Provides core printing functions for PostScript print devices. Uses RAW-formatted files.

The availability of these print engines gives printer manufacturers several options for developing printer drivers. They can create a mini driver that implements only the unique functionality of a particular print device and rely on the appropriate print engine for print services, or they can make their own custom driver that uses its own print engine.

Printing has been enhanced in several areas. Print spooling has been optimized to improve read/write performance from disk. This allows higher-volume printing and faster printing of documents. The Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor used for network-attached print devices has been updated. The updates improve the way print servers establish connections with network-attached print devices and monitor print jobs for error messages, progress, and completion. You can now monitor the status of network-attached printers using a Web browser. To do this, type in the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the network-attached printer.

Automatic print driver distribution on clusters

Also new for Windows Server 2003 are a set of tools for managing print services from the command line. These tools include the following:

  • PrintDriverInfo A Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit tool for obtaining information about the printers installed on a system

  • SplInfo A Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit tool for tracking print spool information and usage statistics

  • PrnMngr A built-in tool for installing printers and managing printers configured on a computer

  • PrnCnfg A built-in tool for setting printer configuration, including printer name, printer properties, printer sharing, and printer publishing in the Active Directory directory service

  • PrnDrv A built-in tool for listing and managing print drivers

  • PrnJobs A built-in tool for viewing and managing print jobs in a print queue

  • PrnPort A built-in tool for creating and managing Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) ports for printers

  • PrntQctl A built-in tool for managing print queues

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