Printing with Windows NT

Configuring, sharing, and pooling printers

Printing in Windows NT can be deceptively simple if you have only a printer connected to a computer's printer port for your own use. But when youuse NT as a print server, you can do more to provide flexible, optimized printservices than you could with any previous Microsoft operating system. Thismonth, I demystify printing terminology, tell you how to optimally configureprint options in several different scenarios, and look at some NT printingfeatures.

Defining Printing
At first glance, you might think that Microsoft has once again redefinedsome common terms to match its version of reality. In this case, the newdefinitions make sense. A printing device is the physical object thatproduces the paper with the printed text or image. A printer is thecombination of a printing device plus some parameters that configure the deviceand how you use it. NT distinguishes between the logical printer and thephysical printing device. These definitions will make more sense as I proceed,but the important point is that the user sees and can connect to printers on thenetwork, not printing devices. One printing device can have many printeridentities, and one printer can be a whole room full of printing devices. Ifthis configuration seems strange, think of disk drives: A physical disk canappear as many logical disks, and a logical disk can, thanks to striping orvolume sets, be several physical disks.

Adding a Printer
You can open the Printers window from the My Computer folder; from Settings,Control Panel on the Start menu; or from Explorer. Click the Add Printer icon tocreate a printer definition. NT 4.0 provides the Add Printer Wizard, whichsimplifies the process. You have two options, as Screen 1 shows, andyou need to read both descriptions. The first option, My Computer, states thatAll settings will be managed and configured on this computer. In otherwords, you are defining a local printer. To set up this configuration, you mustbe a member of the Administrators, Print Operators, or Server Operators groups,or be a Power User on a workstation. The second option is Network printerserver. The accompanying description informs you that this option will Connectto a printer on another machine. All settings for this printer are managed by aprint server that has been set up by an administrator. With this option, theprinter has been defined and shared, and all you have to do is connect to it.

Let's look first at setting up a local printer, a DeskJet 540. After youchoose the My Computer option, the next dialog box, shown in Screen 2,lets you select a printer port. For this example, I chose LPT1. Next, you mustselect a specific printer. NT asks for the location of the printer driver filesand installs the printer driver on your computer. You can name the printer oruse the default name NT suggests. Then choose whether to share the printer, andif so, under what name.

Sharing Printers
NT has some neat tricks for sharing printers or connecting to sharedprinters. If you select the Shared option from Screen 3, you canspecify which other platforms and operating systems will be connecting to theshare. This step is important because of the way a shared printer handlesprinter drivers. Whenever other NT users connect to your computer, if they donot have the appropriate printer driver locally, NT downloads a copy of theprinter driver from your system. They do not need a copy of the printer driverinstalled on their machine.

This approach has several benefits. First, individual users do not have toinstall, and possibly update, printer drivers for each printer they might wantto connect to, which saves time and disk space. In most cases, the typical userdoes not have the authority to install a local printer driver anyway, as Imentioned earlier. Second, whenever a printer manufacturer or Microsoft releasesa new print driver, the printer owner or the system administrator loads it on tothe computer that controls the printer. The next time remote users connect, NTautomatically downloads the new print driver.

So, why the list of platforms? Well, suppose your computer is an IntelPentium system and a user with a Digital Equipment Alpha computer connects toyour shared DeskJet and copies your print driver. As you might expect, thedriver will not work. The user needs the print driver for the Alpha, not thedriver for your Pentium system. To avoid this problem, select and install theprint drivers for all the flavors of NT that might connect to your sharedprinter. When Alpha users connect, their systems find and download the correctdriver automatically. In reality, you might use an Alpha as a powerful printserver with a group of Intel-based clients, but the principle is the same: Loadthe print drivers for any potential clients. If a different client comes onlinelater, you can easily add the new print driver from the printer configurationmenu. If you have Windows 95 clients, load the print driver for Win95, also.Win95 is not as smart as NT. Win95 downloads the driver when it connects for thefirst time, but it stores that driver on the Win95 computer and never updatesthe driver. After you load the different drivers, the setup is complete.

Connecting to a Shared Printer
Now let's go back into the Printers folder and add another printer. Thistime, the printer is on another NT computer. Select the Network printerserver option from the Add Printer Wizard. A browse list from which you canselect a shared printer on the network appears, as Screen 4 shows. In thisexample, you select the HP LaserJet 4 Plus, and you're finished. You don't needto install print drivers or search for the NT CD-ROM. All users can connect to ashared printer in this way if they have the right permissions. You do not haveto be an Administrator.

Connecting to Non-NT Printers
What if the shared printer is not on an NT computer? For example, the sharedprinter might be on a Windows for Workgroups or Win95 computer. You cannotborrow a copy of the printer driver, because these operating systems do notsupport NT's driver sharing feature and do not have the correct driversinstalled. When you add the printer, choose the Network printer serveroption; select the shared printer; and the wizard prompts you for the NT printerdriver location. Because you must install the print driver locally, as Screen 5shows, only an Administrator or operator with the necessary rights can make thisconnection.

Configuring the Printer
Suppose that, on the computer with the LaserJet 4 Plus, you want to letusers place large jobs in a print queue and print these jobs after 6:00 pm. Andperhaps you want a high-priority printer for urgent jobs. For this setup, youmust configure printer properties. You've already defined the LaserJet 4 Plus.Now define two more printers, using the same printer driver but giving theprinters different names, such as Low4Plus and Hi4Plus. Then change theproperties for each printer. For Low4Plus, double-click the printer icon, andthen select Printer, Properties from the menu. In the Properties dialog box,select the Scheduling tab, as shown in Screen 6. Change the Available propertyso that the printer is available only from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am. The users canconnect to this printer and send their low-priority jobs to it. The computeracting as the print server will hold these jobs until 6:00 pm. To verify thissetting, print a job from your computer to this printer. Then go to the Printersfolder on either the computer that originated the print job or the print server,and double-click the document name. You can see that this job is scheduled from6:00 pm onwards. Of course, you must make sure that you have enough disk spaceon the print server to store the jobs until 6:00 pm.

To set up the Hi4Plus printer, follow the same steps, but instead ofchanging the available times, change the priority of the printer. The defaultpriority is 1, and you can choose different priority levels up to 99, theHighest priority. For this printer, you want to use the highest priority. For ahigh-priority printer, leave the Available option as the default, Always.

Now you have three printers to which users can connect: HP4Plus, Low4Plus,and Hi4Plus. All the printers are the same physical printing device, yet eachhas different properties; they appear as three different printers to the users.Screen 7 shows the three printer choices in WordPad's Print dialog box.

Setting Permissions
From the Properties dialog box for Hi4Plus, choose the Security tab, and setPermissions so that only authorized users can send jobs to Hi4Plus. Printers arelike any other NT resource; the Administrator controls who can access theresource and what level of access to permit. You can set different accesscontrol permissions for each printer.

Pooling Printers
If your environment is a large office with a central group of printers,consider printer pooling. You enable pooling from the Ports tab in the printer'sProperties dialog box or from the Add Printer Wizard when you set up the printer(select the Enable printer pooling check box shown in Screen 2).As Screen 8shows, you can print to multiple local LPT ports, network ports, or acombination. You do not have to connect the pooled printing devices to the samecomputer. Pooling is ideal when someone takes jobs off the printer and placesthem in out-boxes for collection, such as in a central print shop. But don'tpool three printers, one on each floor of the building. You cannot control whichprinter gets the job (the first available printer in the pool takes the job),and you do not receive notification about which printer handled the job.

Note one very important point about printer pools: Because the user sendsthe print job to a printer, the driver used is the one set up in the user'sprinter definition. The decision about which device gets the data is made afterthe job is formatted for the printer. Therefore, all printers in the pool mustuse the same print driver. The printers need to be the same type, although youcan pool a LaserJet 4 Plus and a LaserJet III if you use the driver for the III.The LaserJet 4 Plus is backward compatible, but if you configure it this way,you give up its advanced features such as duplexing.

Learning More
Other features of NT printing, such as redirecting output from a stalledprinter; auditing printer use; and configuring multiple printers with options,including separator pages, spooling, and defining forms, are worthinvestigating. Check them out. You'll find that NT printing offers morecapabilities than just generating documents.