configuring and troubleshooting windows xp professional phần 9 docx

If you plug in a USB or Firewire print device that is natively supported in Windows XP, it willinstall itself without any interaction.You simply plug it in and walk away.Themost common w

Once a file is configured offline, it needs to be synchronized whenever it’schanged either on the server or on the client Even if the computer is discon-nected from the network it can be resynchronized when the computer is recon-nected.You can set additional properties via the Offline Files tab of the FolderOptions dialog box (see Figure 12.42).This is access by clicking tools then folderoptions from the file explorer window.

You can configure the following parameters on the Offline Files tab:

■ Enable Offline Files This enables and disables the folder for offline files

■ Synchronize all offline files when logging on Selecting this optionwill synchronize all offline files when logging on

■ Synchronize all offline files before logging off Selecting thisoption will synchronize all offline files before logging off

■ Display a reminder every… minutes This will display a reminder

on the client machine to synchronize the offline files that have changed;you can set the number of minutes between each reminder

■ Create an Offline Files shortcut on the desktop This will create

an Offline Files shortcut on the desktop

■ Encrypt offline files to secure data This selection will encrypt files

on the client computer to help increase security for these files

Amount of disk space to use for temporary offline files This slider

Figure 12.42Offline Files Tab

■ Delete Files… button Deletes the offline files cached locally on yourmachine.You can do this to free up disk space.

■ View Files button Shows a list of files available offline

Clicking Advanced will bring up the screen shown in Figure 12.43.The

options on this property page allow you to control how your computer willbehave when the network connection is lost

Working with Offline FilesWhen you synchronize your files,Windows XP compares the version of the file

on the network to the version you have on your local PC If Windows XPdetects that someone else has changed the file, you are given the option of over-writing the changes on the server or saving your file as a different name

If you delete a network file on your local PC while working offline, andsomeone changes the file on the server, the file will not be deleted at the nextsynchronization If you are disconnected from the network when a new file isadded to a shared network folder that you have made available offline, that newfile will be added to your computer at your next synchronization

Synchronizing Your Data with the NetworkFigure 12.44 shows the Synchronization menu, which you can access by right-clicking on the file you want to synchronize.You can synchronize by selecting

Synchronizefrom the menu Additionally, when you log off or on to the work you can configure the computer to automatically synchronize offline files

net-Figure 12.43Offline Files Advanced Settings

Remote Installation Services

Remote Installation Services (RIS) allow you to automatically install Windows

XP remotely across a network via a RIS server.To use RIS, you must first create

a compatible image for the computers you want to install Windows XP on Ifyou are only installing on a couple of computers, or all of your computers arevery different, RIS is probably not the best choice for you RIS requires the fol-lowing services to be properly installed:

of the computers which will use that image

■ Use RIPrep to get the computer ready for imaging and create the RISimage

Figure 12.44Synchronization Menu

When installing via RIS, you either boot from the PXE-compatible networkcard or the RIS boot disk, then you select the image you want installed on thecomputer.

To use RIS, your computer must have a Preboot Execution Environment(PXE)–enabled network adapter or have a network adapter that is supported bythe RIS startup floppy disk.To create a RIS startup floppy disk, you must use theRbfg.exe utility found on the \RemInst\Admin\I386 folder of the Windows XPRIS server

RIPrep is a utility you can use to get a client ready for imaging RIPrep figures the source computer to a generic state, removing anything that is unique

con-to the client installation, such as the computer’s unique security ID (SID), puter name, and any Registry settings unique to the client source computer

com-RIPrep will also create and copy the computer’s image onto the RIS server

Installing Windows XP with RISYou can install Windows XP by using Microsoft’s RIS services In order to installWindows XP with RIS, a RIS server must be running, the server must have animage configured for your machine, and the necessary services must be running

on the network.These services include DHCP, DNS, and Active Directory.Youmust create a CD-based image before you can create a RipPrep image

Microsoft recommends granting access only to images a client can install on theirmachine as a best practice

Setting Up Windows XP RIS Images on a Windows 2000 Server

To set up Windows XP RIS images on Windows 2000 Server, you must install Service Pack 2 or higher on the Windows 2000 Server that is run- ning RIS At the time of writing, there was also a post-Service Pack 2 hotfix available for correcting a problem with CD-ROM-based images of Windows XP You can find further information on these issues by con-

sulting the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, Q299316, How to Set up Windows XP Images on a Windows 2000 Server, and Q287546, “Missing Files” Error Message When Deploying Windows XP Images.

Configuring & Implementing…

Customizing RIS

Prestaging clients for RIS installation is possible, so that certain clients will bedirected to certain RIS servers.This is useful for load balancing and improvedsecurity.This is done as part of the RIS installation when the server is set up andcan also be changed in the RIS server properties later

Figure 12.45 shows the RIS properties screen for the RIS server.You can accessthis via the Active Directory Users And Computers administrative tool Browse to

the RIS server, select Properties, and then choose the Remote Install tab.

The Respond to client computers requesting service check box will

enable the RIS sever to respond to requests for RIS installations

The Do not respond to unknown client computers check box requires

you to prestage computers when this box is checked.This means that there must

be an entry in Active Directory in order for the computer to respond to therequest for service Creating an entry is covered later in this section

Clicking Show Clients will present the dialog box shown in Figure 12.46.

This will allow you to view and search the RIS clients serviced by this RIS server

Clicking Advanced from the Remote Install tab (see Figure 12.45) will

dis-play a group of tabs related to remote installation.The first one we address is theRIS Images tab (see Figure 12.47), which displays all of the RIS images available

on the RIS server.You can also add, delete, and modify RIS images from here Inmost cases, quite a few images will be available on the RIS server.You can changethe properties of an image at this screen as well

Figure 12.45RIS Properties

Figure 12.48 shows the RIS properties In this example, we’ve added somedescriptive text to the help text associated with the image.You could modify the

“friendly description” as well to make the installation more meaningful Someinformation about the image itself is also available on this screen

The New Clients tab for the RIS server is shown in Figure 12.49.The newclients screen will control some of the options with regard to how the newclients are configured.You can set the computer naming format from this screen,

as well as the location of the client computer account

Figure 12.50 shows the tools that are installed for working with RIS, eitherfrom Microsoft or from a third-party vendor.You can set the properties of thetools installed at this screen.You can remove tools from this screen as well

Figure 12.46Show Remote Installation Clients Dialog Box

Figure 12.47Images Tab

Figure 12.48RIS Image Properties

Figure 12.49New Clients Tab

Figure 12.50Tools Tab

Prestaging a Client for RIS Operation

In some cases, only certain RIS servers should respond to certain clients.Thiscould be because of network server locations, to manage bandwidth and usage, orbecause multiple vendors remote installation servers are on the network

Whatever the reason, prestaging clients is a simple process

First, on the RIS server, check the RIS server check box Do not respond

to unknown client computers.This will prevent the Remote Installationserver from responding to requests from computers that don’t have an account inActive Directory

In order to prestage a client, you need to create a computer account in ActiveDirectory, which you can accomplish by using the Active Directory Users AndComputers administrative tool Open the administrative tool and right-click then

select New | Computer (see Figure 12.51).

You will see the dialog shown in Figure 12.52, which will allow you to name

the computer.Type the name in the box and click Next.This will bring you to

the screen shown in Figure 12.53 From here you can choose whether the puter will be a managed computer Most computers on a business network aremanaged computers Select whether this computer will be managed (depending

com-on your circumstances) and click Next.

Next, you will see a confirmation dialog box Once you click Finish, the

computer account is created in Active Directory, and the computer is ready for

Remote Installation Naming is complete, so click Next and then select Managed Properties

Figure 12.51RIS Prestage Computer

Figure 12.52Naming

Figure 12.53Managed Dialog

Group Policies provide administrators with the ability to control and configureuser’s settings, manage user’s data, and perform remote software installation andmaintenance Group Policies require Active Directory.The number and complexity

of Group Policy objects can adversely affect network performance and login times

Software distribution by way of Group Policy can reduce the cost of managinginstallations to many users Software can be assigned or published Assigning requiresthe software to be installed, while publishing makes it available for users to install

Remote Installation Services (RIS) allow you to install an operating systemacross the network from a RIS server.This can make it very easy for users toinstall Windows XP without having a deskside support tech present RIS requires

a PXE-enabled network card or RIS boot disk.They also require DHCP andDNS, as well as Active Directory Remote Installation Services can use a lot ofnetwork bandwidth, so plan carefully when using RIS

Solutions Fast Track

Group Policies

; Active Directory is required for the use of Group Policies

; Too many Group Policy Objects can adversely affect network traffic

; Too many Group Policy Objects can adversely affect logon times

Software Installation and Maintenance

; Active Directory is required for Software Installation and Maintenance

; DFS (Distributed File System) can help ease network woes

; Remember that the installation package has to travel across your network

Offline Files and Synchronization

; Active Directory is required for offline files and synchronization

; Depending on directory size, performing initial synchronization couldtake a while

; You can configure synchronization to automatically occur at logoff orlogon.

; You can configure reminders to remind users to synchronize.

Remote Installation Services

; Active Directory, DHCP, and DNS are required for Remote InstallationServices

; Don’t forget to authorize a RIS server in Active Directory

; When creating an image, you need to log into the machine as anadministrator

; Where practical, only grant access to images a user can install on hismachine

Q: I am trying to use RIS to install Windows XP on a computer.The computerand network card are not PXE-compliant Can I still use RIS?

A: Yes, if the network card is supported by the RIS boot disk Not all networkcards are supported—check your RIS documentation from Microsoft to seewhich are supported

Q: We are concerned about hackers using tools such as l0pht to crack security

on our network Is there something we can do with Group Policy to protectour organization?

A: l0pht was created to crack NTLM security, but it is ineffective against

Kerberos security Active Directory uses Kerberos natively, but it is backwardcompatible to NTLM, too However, you can disable the NTLM compati-

Frequently Asked Questions

The following Frequently Asked Questions, answered by the authors of this book, are designed to both measure your understanding of the concepts presented in this chapter and to assist you with real-life implementation of these concepts To have your questions about this chapter answered by the author, browse to

www.syngress.com/solutions and click on the “Ask the Author” form.

Q: We use system policies on our Windows 95 and NT computers Can I stilluse them with Windows XP?

A: Yes, you can still use the system policies, and you can use the POLEDIT

utility to configure them.You must place the ntconfig.pol file(s) in theNetlogon share of the Windows 2000 Domain Controllers.This is nowlocated at C:\WINNT\SYSVOL\SYSVOL

Q: I don’t see the option to make files available offline.What should I do?

A: Make sure that the folder is configured properly to make the files available

Also note that if fast user switching is enabled on the client computer, youcannot use offline files

Q: Do users need to be local administrators to install software on their computers?

A: It depends on the software.With software packaged as an MSI file or ZAPfile, the user generally does not need to be a local administrator

Q: I want to make the offline folder unavailable How do I do this?

A: You can accomplish this either through the settings on the folder share, toturn off making the folder available, or for a more permanent solution, youcan do this via Group Policy

Q: Should I use roaming profile shares with offline folders?

A:This is a bad idea.You need to turn off Offline Folders for shares whereroaming user profiles are stored If you do not turn off Offline Folders for auser’s profile, you may experience synchronization problems because bothOffline Folders and Roaming Profiles try to synchronize the files in a user’sprofile

Q: What happens if someone else changes the offline file in the network share,and I connect and try to synchronize? Will I overwrite that user’s changes?

A: When you synchronize your files,Windows XP compares the version of the file

on the network to the version you have on your local PC If Windows XPdetects that someone else has changed the file, you are given the option ofoverwriting the changes on the server or saving your file as a different name

Working with Printers

Solutions in this chapter:

■ Adding a Local Printer

■ Sharing Your Local Printer

■ Connecting to a Network Printer

■ Configuring Your Printer

■ Troubleshooting Printer Problems

; Solutions Fast Track

; Frequently Asked Questions

Chapter 13

635

on printing to stay in business For example, mortgage companies could not rently survive without their printers If you have ever applied for a mortgageloan, you have filled out a stack of paperwork three feet high Other companiesuse printers to print manuals and booklets It can be cheaper for a company tobuy a quality printer and do all of their book printing in-house instead of having

cur-to send it cur-to an outside printing press

Printers vary drastically in price.You can get an entry-level printer for under

$100, or you can easily spend $10,000 for a high-end color LaserJet printer Mostcompanies are going away from the “give everyone their own printer” approach.This is difficult to administer.This is not to mention that, for the price of 50local printers, you can buy yourself one or two network printers that will vastlyoutperform the local printers in quality and speed At times, local printers areneeded For instances, any time you are printing confidential information youprobably don’t want to send your print job to a shared public printer Usuallyhuman resources and payroll have their own local printers

In this chapter, you will learn how to install local printers.We also look at how

to share out local printers and make them available to network users.We then show

users only.This chapter exposes you to installing, configuring, and managingprinters—both network and local.

Adding a Local Printer

Before we look at installation, let’s lay the groundwork with an understanding ofMicrosoft’s printing terminology.This has changed since Windows NT 4.0 andWindows 2000 Microsoft changed their terminology to better match howpeople commonly refer to printer components Let’s review what the compo-nents were called in NT/2000, and then we explain the new terms It is impor-tant to understand both ways, because more than likely you will hear it referred

to both ways (although only one way is correct) If you heard somebody talkingabout a printer, what would you think they were talking about? More than likelyyou would assume that they are talking about a machine that prints

Unfortunately, according to Microsoft NT/2000 terminology, you would be

mis-taken In NT/2000, Microsoft called the machine that prints the print device.They

considered the printer to be the collection of software that controls the printdevice, such as the print driver, the print queue, and any other needed softwarefiles Do you see how this can be confusing? Finally, Microsoft has changed theirterminology to something that makes a little more sense.The machine that doesthe printing is called the printer (no longer called print device), and the collec-

tion of software that controls the printer is called the logical printer.The printer

driver, which is covered in great detail in the following section, is the software that

tells you computer how to instruct your printer to print A large portion of

printing problems have to do with using an incorrect driver.The print queue

con-tains all of the jobs waiting to be printed

Printer Drivers

By using printer drivers, every program doesn’t have to worry itself about how tocommunicate with every printer on the market.The program prints the same toall printers, and the driver handles getting the information ready Printer driverstranslate commands from the computer’s language to the printer’s language Perthe Windows XP Help, printer drivers consist of three files types:

■ Configuration or printer interface dll files These files are sible for the displaying of your printer’s properties box

respon-■ Data file (.dll , pcd, gpd, or ppd files) These files define the

capa-bilities of a printer Capacapa-bilities include maximum resolution, duplexing,and paper formats

■ Printer graphics driver file This files translates the computer mands into printer commands format.

com-Any print device that attaches directly to a computer is considered a local

printer.The benefit of using a local print device is that it does not require a

net-work for printing At one time or another, most users with home machines haveinstalled a local printer Local print devices can be connected to USB, Firewire,serial, and parallel ports.The easiest methods are USB and Firewire If you plug in

a USB or Firewire print device that is natively supported in Windows XP, it willinstall itself without any interaction.You simply plug it in and walk away.Themost common way of connecting a local print device to a computer is via theparallel (or printer) port Most personal printers available on the market todaycome with software that walks you through the entire installation process In thissection, you will learn how to install a local printer through the Add PrinterWizard included with Windows XP, as shown in Exercise 13.1

Exercise 13.1 Installing a Local Printer

1 Click Start.

2 Choose Printers and Faxes from the menu.This will give you the

Printers and Faxes window shown in Figure 13.1

Figure 13.1The Printers and Faxes Window

3 Within the Printers and Faxes window, click the Add a printer link under the Printer Tasks menu.This will start the Add Printer Wizard

window shown in Figure 13.3

5 In the Local or Network Printer window, you must decide if you want

to install a printer that is physically attached to your computer or if youwant to install a printer that is located somewhere on your network If

Figure 13.2The Welcome to the Add Printer Wizard Window

Figure 13.3Selecting a Local or Network Printer

you are installing a local printer, you can tell Windows to automaticallydetect the printer as long as is it is Plug and Play compliant For this

exercise, choose Local printer attached to this computer and Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer Click

Nextto continue.Your computer will now search for Plug and Playcompatible printers, as shown in Figure 13.4

6 In this example, we do not have a Plug and Play compatible printerplugged into the computer.This brings up the window shown in Figure

13.5.To install the printer manually, click Next.This will give you the

Select a Printer Port window shown in Figure 13.6

Figure 13.4Searching for Plug and Play Printers

Figure 13.5The New Printer Detection Search Results Window

7 You must now select which port your printer will use.You can eithercreate a new port or use one of the default ports.The default ports avail-able include:

■ LPT 1–3 Use one of these when your printer is attached to a allel (printer) port

par-■ COM 1–4 Use one of these when your printer is attached to aserial port

■ File Use this to save your print jobs to a file that you can latersubmit to a print queue

■ IR Use this when your printer is connecting via an infrared port

For example, if you do not have a modem you will not have theoption for a fax port Choose the correct print port (LPT 1 for this

exercise) and click Next to continue.

8 You are now prompted to install the printer software (see Figure 13.7)

You can either choose your printer from the list, or you can click Have Disk to retrieve the software from the media provided by your printermanufacturer as shown in Figure 13.8 For this example, we chose aprinter from the list.We chose to install the HP LaserJet 4000 SeriesPCL printer Choose the manufacturer (HP) on the left and choose theprinter model (LaserJet 4000 Series PCL) on the right.You can use theWindows Update button to update the list of printer drivers provided

with Windows XP After choosing your printer from the list, click Next

to continue

Figure 13.6Selecting a Printer Port

9 You must now choose a name for your printer (see Figure 13.9) Be sure

to name it something descriptive so that you can easily identify it later

For this demonstration, we accepted the default name Click Next to

continue

Figure 13.7Installing Printer Software

Figure 13.8Installing Printer Software from Disk

Figure 13.9Naming Your Printer

10 In Figure 13.10, you have the option of sharing your printer with othernetwork users Printer sharing is covered in the next section Choose

Do not share this printer and click Next to continue.

11 You can optionally print a test page as shown in Figure 13.11 Choose

Yes to print a test page or choose No to skip the test page In this cise, we skipped the test page Choose No and click Next to continue.

exer-12 You are now given the Completing the Add Printer Wizard window (see

Figure 3.12).Verify that the information is correct and click Finish to

install your new printer If the information is not correct, you can use the

Back button to go back and make changes to the wizard After clicking

Finish, you will see the Copying Files window shown in Figure 13.13

Figure 13.10Configuring Printer Sharing

Figure 13.11Printing a Test Page

Once the files have finished copying, your printer will be installed andwill appear in the Printers and Faxes window, as shown in Figure 13.14.

Figure 13.12Completing the Add Printer Wizard

Figure 13.13The Copying Files Window

Figure 13.14The Printers and Faxes Window

Printing to a Local Printer from a Remote Session

Remote desktop is a new feature of Windows XP that allows you to control yourdesktop remotely It uses terminal server’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) tech-nology.When you connect remotely, the display for the machine you are con-necting to is locked to keep prying eyes from watching.You can make your localprinters available from within a remote session Let me explain Say that you havetwo computers: one at home named xp-homepc and one at work called xp-workpc.You can connect from xp-homepc to the company network and takeremote control of xp-workpc.What happens if you decide to print something fromxp-workpc while you have control? It doesn’t do you much good to print some-thing if you are going to have to drive to work to get it off of the printer.You canmake the printers attached to xp-homepc available to xp-workpc while you haveremote control.This way you can print from your work PC to your home PC Usethe following steps to make a local printer available to a remote session:

1 Click Options from within the Remote Desktop Connection window.

2 Go to the Local Resources tab.

3 Check the box next to Printers.

NOTE

You can open the Remote Desktop Connection window is opened from

Start | All Programs | Accessories | Communications | Remote Desktop Connection.

Sharing Your Local Printer

There are many reasons why you may want to share your local printer Perhapsyou are on a budget, but you want to be able to print from three computers atonce Buying one printer and sharing it is much cheaper than buying threeprinters Perhaps you want to share your printer for convenience sake Maybe youhave the only printer in the office Instead of everyone having to log in to your

PC to print, you can just share your local printer and allow everyone to print to

it from his or her PC

When sharing your printer, you should follow some guidelines for the sharename.Try not to use long filenames, or names that contains special characters orspaces Let’s define what would constitute a long filename Certain programs havedifficulty printing to printer names longer than 31 characters I know what you areprobably thinking.Who names their printers with 31+ character names? This limitapplies to the fully qualified name of the printer (basically the entire universalnaming convention for the printer) For example, you may have a printer named

hplaserjet8000, and it may be shared on a computer named chadsdesktop.The fully

qualified name of the shared printer would be \\chadsdesktop\

hplaserjet8000.This would equal a 29-character name.The characters add upquickly If DOS-based clients are going to be mapping to the shared printer, you

should stick to the eight dot three naming convention.This means the name should

be no more than eight characters followed by a period and three more characters

For example, laserjet.5si would be a valid DOS-compatible printer name.

Some of the problems you may run into if you don’t follow these guidelinesare programs appearing to submit a print job, but nothing ever reaches the

printer Some older programs will display an error message, such as an access lation, when you try to send a job to the printer If you must use long sharenames, create another logical printer with a compatible name and direct it to thesame printer Map all of your older clients to the new shorter-named logicalprinter Renaming the printer almost always fixes these types of problems

vio-Configuring Print Drivers for Network ClientsOne of the many tasks of a network administrator is mapping users to the correctprinters.This requires two parts—mapping the client to the correct printer andinstalling the correct print driver on the client As discussed earlier, if your

machine does not have the correct driver installed, you cannot successfully print

to the printer If your clients are running Windows XP,Windows NT 4.0, orWindows 2000, they automatically download the correct version of the printdriver every time they print to the print server.Windows 95 and Windows 98will automatically install the correct driver the first time they are mapped to the

printer However, if the print driver on the server is changed,Windows 9x clients

will continue to use the old print driver that was installed from the server

Exercise 13.2 walks you through sharing your local printer

Exercise 13.2 Sharing a Local Printer

2 Choose Printers and Faxes from the menu.This will give you the

window shown back in Figure 13.14

3 Click the printer to select it (Use a single-click, not a double-click).Thiswill change the options on the Printer Tasks menu to those shown inFigure 13.15

4 Click Share this printer.This will give you the window shown in

Figure 13.16

Figure 13.15The Printers and Faxes Window

Figure 13.16The Sharing Tab of a Printer’s Property Page

5 Select the Share this printer radio button and type in a descriptive

name for the share Be sure to name this something meaningful so that

you will be able recognize it later Notice that by default, the List in the directorycheckbox is enabled.This tells Windows XP to publishyour shared printer in Active Directory.You may optionally installprinter drivers for the clients that will be connecting to your printer

Click Additional Drivers… to add more drivers.This will give you

the window shown in Figure 13.17

6 Select the drivers that you want to install and click OK.You will now be

prompted for the media of the selected printer drivers (see Figure

13.18).Type the path to the drivers in the Copy files from box or browse to the drivers Click OK to add the drivers to your machine.

7 After you have installed the necessary drivers, click OK on the Sharing

tab of the printer’s properties page to save your changes and make your

Figure 13.17The Additional Drivers Window

Figure 13.18Providing a Printer Driver

Connecting to a Network Printer

There are two types of network printers: shared local printers and standalone work printers.You saw in the previous section how to share a local printer

net-Shared local printers must be physically connected and installed on the sharingcomputer, and they must be shared with the appropriate permissions Standalonenetwork printers have a built-in network interface card.This means that they donot depend on a computer’s network card for network connectivity Standalonenetwork printers function as their own print server Users can map directly to astandalone network printer Network printers are typically higher-end printerswith enhanced features not found on local printers

Connecting to a shared local printer and connecting to a standalone networkprinter both have their benefits and drawbacks.The benefits of shared localprinters are ease of setup and cost.Typically, local printers cost less than stan-dalone network printers As you saw in Exercise 13.1, installing local printers isfairly easy Certain local printers practically install themselves when you plugthem in Another benefit is that with shared local printers, you have a Windows

XP machine functioning as the print server.This allows you to install the correct

print drivers on the server and clients (Windows 9x, NT, 2000, and XP will

automatically install them without any user interaction).The drawback of sharedlocal printing is that it makes the sharing computer (print server) a single point

of failure If the machine hosting the printer loses network connectivity, no onecan print to the shared printer Also, if the shared printer is utilized heavily, theusers working on the local machine may notice a decrease in performance asprint jobs are constantly being submitted Installing standalone network printerscan be a little more complicated because you must use proprietary software toconfigure the network card on the printer For example, to configure a stan-dalone Hewlett Packard network printer, you must use their program (JetAdmin)

to configure the printer’s network card Standalone network printers do offer eral benefits Once configured, you can move them around the network withouthaving to reconnect them to a workstation every time.The only thing requiredwould be to plug them into a network jack and make sure that they can commu-nicate on that network For example, if you move a printer using TCP/IP toanother network segment, it must have a valid IP address for that segment

sev-The steps for mapping to a shared local printer are different than mapping to

a standalone network printer Mapping to a shared local printer is covered inExercise 13.3

Exercise 13.3 Mapping to a Shared Local Printer

1 Click Start.

2 Choose Printers and Faxes from the menu.This will give you the

Printers and Faxes window as shown back in Figure 13.14

3 Within the Printers and Faxes window, click the Add Printer link under the Printer Tasks menu.This will start the Add Printer Wizard

(shown back in Figure 13.2)

4 Click Next to proceed to the Local or Network Printer Selection

window shown back in Figure 13.3

5 In the Local or Network Printer window choose A network printer, or

a printer attached to another computer Click Next to continue.

6 You are now presented with the Specify a Printer window (see Figure13.19) From this window, you can find your printer in one of three ways:

■ You can search Active Directory for the published printer object

■ You can connect to the printer via its UNC (universal naming vention) or by browsing the network

con-■ You can map directly to the URL of the printer

Let’s walk through each of the ways Choose Find a printer in the tory and click Next.This will give you the window shown in Figure 13.20.

direc-Figure 13.19Specifying a Printer

1 Type in the Name, Location, or Model and click Find Now.This will

show you all of the printers to which you have permissions that match thespecified information.You can use the Features tab (see Figure 13.21) tosearch based on the following criteria If the following criteria are not

enough for you, you can use the Advanced tab (see Figure 13.22) to

search for specified fields:

Figure 13.20Printers Tab of the Searching Active Directory Window

Figure 13.21Features Tab of the Searching Active Directory Window

2 If searching Active Directory returns the correct printer, you can map to

the printer by right-clicking it and choosing Connect For this exercise,

we want to find the printer by browsing the network Close the

Searching Active Directory window.This will return you to the Specify

a Printer window shown in Figure 13.19 Select the Connect to this printer radio button and click Next to browse the network.This will

give you the window shown in Figure 13.23

3 Double-click Microsoft Windows Network and browse to the

machine that contains the shared local printer to which you are

map-ping Select the printer and click Next to continue.

4 You must now choose whether to set your network printer to be the

default printer, as shown in Figure 13.24 Click Next to continue.

Figure 13.22Advanced Tab of the Searching Active Directory Window

Figure 13.23Browsing the Network for a Printer

5 Completing the Add Printer Wizard is the last step (see Figure 13.25).

Read the summary and verify that you have made the correct choices

Click Back to make any changes and click Finish to save your changes.

Configuring Your Printer

Installing a printer is only half of the battle.The other half is configuring theprinter to function as needed In previous exercises, we looked at some of theprinter’s properties windows In the following section, we discuss the remainingwindows and how to use them to configure your printer.We discuss how tomanage jobs that have been submitted to the printer by using the print queue

We also look at some of the add-on features for Windows XP printing, such asSimple TCP/IP Services and Web-based printing

Figure 13.24Setting the Default Printer

Figure 13.25Completing the Add Printer Wizard

The Properties of a Logical Printer

You view the properties of a logical printer by right-clicking the printer and

choosing Properties from the pop-up box.This is where you configure the

many settings available for your printer It is important to have an understanding

of these windows because setting them incorrectly can cause printer problems All

it takes is checking the wrong box on the Ports tab and you will no longer beable to print Incorrectly setting the Security tab may allow users to delete eachothers print jobs or maybe even delete the printer itself

General Tab

The General tab is shown in Figure 13.26.When you first view the properties of

a printer, this is the window that you see by default.This window contains thename and the location of the printer Location is a very useful feature Beforesending your job to the printer, you can look to make sure that the printer isclose to you From a troubleshooting standpoint, this can really make your lifeeasier Large companies can have hundreds of printers By filling in the locationwith something descriptive, such as cube number or department name, you caneasily physically locate a printer when a user has a printing problem

The General tab also contains descriptive information about the printer, such

as comments, features, and model.This is useful when you need a certain feature,

Figure 13.26The General Tab of a Printer’s Properties

printer.This way you don’t send a legal document to a printer that only has letterpaper.This can be frustrating for both you and other users It is frustrating foryou because you have to manually load in the paper needed It is frustrating forother users because the printer (by default) won’t print any jobs submitted afteryours until your job has finished printing.

Clicking Printing Preferences… will give you the window shown in

Figure 13.27 Use this button to configure your personal default document erties, such as layout and paper quality Some of the defaults that you can set arethe layout of the paper (landscape or portrait), duplexing settings, and the order

prop-in which pages should be prprop-inted.The Advanced button displays how your

printer is currently configured

Clicking Print Test Page will print a test page and give you the window shown in Figure 13.28 Click OK if the test page printed successfully If the test page did not print successfully, click Troubleshoot to help diagnose the

problem.You can gather a lot of information from a test page.Test pages indicatewhether you can print to a certain printer If you look at the test page, it will tellyou the printer driver that was used Also, the test page can tell you if a printer iscolor or black and white If it is a color printer, the Windows logo on the top ofthe page will be in color If your test page doesn’t work, you can use the

Windows XP printer troubleshooter to help diagnose the problem.The bleshooter has you perform a series of steps It then asks you questions on whatthe printer does after each step.The troubleshooter will walk you through ananalytical process of troubleshooting a printer

trou-Figure 13.27Printing Preferences

Ports Tab

The Ports tab is shown in Figure 13.29 Use this tab to configure the port that

your printer will use A port is an interface for communicating with a printer As

mentioned earlier, the default ports available are the following:

■ LPT 1–3 Use one of these when your printer is attached to a parallel (printer) port

■ COM 1–4 Use one of these when your printer is attached to

a serial port

■ File Use this to save your print jobs to a file that can later be submitted to a print queue

■ IR Use this when your printer is connecting via an infrared port

Figure 13.28Printing a Test Page

Figure 13.29The Ports Tab of a Printer’s Properties

Click Add Port… to add additional ports.This will bring you to the screen

shown in Figure 13.30 From this screen, you can add additional local ports orstandard TCP/IP ports.You use local ports when you have computers attacheddirectly to your computer Normally you wouldn’t need to have a lot of LPTports Most of the time you don’t have more than two or three printers attachedlocally to a single computer.You use TCP/IP ports when you want to print to astandalone network printer via its IP address For example, if you were using an

HP network printer that has a built-in network card (HP calls their networkcards JetDirect cards), you could create a TCP/IP port to point directly to the IPaddress assigned to the JetDirect card In this scenario, the printer would function

as the print server In other words, you wouldn’t have to send your job to a printserver and have the server hand it off to the printer, you would bypass the mid-dleman and go straight to the printer If Print Services for UNIX is installed, youcan create an LPR port, which you can use to map to TCP/IP printers con-

nected to UNIX or VAX servers Click Delete Port to remove ports from your

computer.You would do this if you no longer need the ports or if they are nolonger accurate For example, if you created a TCP/IP port to print to a networkprinter, and the IP address of the printer changes, the TCP/IP port is no longer

valid and will cease to work Click Configure Port… to see the Configuring

Ports screen shown in Figure 13.31.This screen allows you to configure thetimeout for your printer.The timeout is the amount of time that will elapsebefore you are notified that your printer is not responding If you know that aparticular printer is slow to respond, you may want to increase the time that theprinter will wait before generating an error

Figure 13.30Adding a Port

Figure 13.31Configuring a Port

The Ports tab is where you enable bidirectional support.This allows printers to

send information, such as status updates, to your computer If you enable tional support, you must use a bidirectional printer cable If you buy a printercable that is IEEE 1284–compliant, you can be sure that it will communicatewith most printers

bidirec-You configure printer pooling from the Ports tab Printer pooling is the ability

to use associate multiple printers with one logical printer.What this means is thatwithin Windows, you can print to one logical printer, and that printer can point

to five physical printers.The first printer available will print the document So,you could say that printer pooling provides fault tolerance and load balancing Itprovides fault tolerance in that if one printer goes down, it will not affect the rest

of the printers in the pool It provides load balancing by sending the print jobs tothe least busy printer.The way this is typically set up is that within a companyyou have a printer room that contains three or four printers (or more) All ofthese printers are pooled together.Whenever a user submits a job, she goes to theroom and see which printer printed her job

Even though printer pooling is a great concept, there are still times when youshould not use it If you are concerned with the security of what you are

printing, a printer pool is probably not for you In a pool, you don’t know whichprinter will have your job.This makes it kind of difficult to be standing next tothe printer to get your job as soon as it prints Also, if your printers are not close

in physical location, pooling is not the best idea Could you imagine the tion of having to walk from printer to printer to find your print job? Rememberthat in a pool the first available printer—not the closest printer—gets the job Ifyou are going to configure a print pool, all of the printers in the pool must usethe same print drivers

frustra-Advanced Tab

Figure 13.32 shows the Advanced tab A lot of settings are configured on this tab.This is where you configure the times that the printer is available By default,printers are set to Always available Usually this is sufficient.This also is whereyou configure the printer priority and spool settings.You can use priorities todetermine which print jobs will be processed first If two jobs enter the queue,the one with the highest priority will print first.The default priority is 1, but 99

is the highest priority.You have the following spool settings:

■ Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster This

■ Start printing after last page is spooled Your computer will waituntil the entire print job has been spooled before it starts printing.

■ Start printing immediately Your computer will not wait until theentire print job has been spooled before it starts printing As soon as theprint device is ready, your computer will start submitting the print job

to the print device while continuing to spool the rest of the file

■ Print directly to printer Your computer will not utilize spooling

Figure 13.32The Advanced Tab of a Printer’s Properties

Spooling

Spooling is the process of saving a print job to the local hard disk before submitting it to the printer The benefit of spooling is that you can usu- ally spool a document faster than you can print it This allows your appli- cation to return to normal use faster after printing something As soon

as the print job is spooled, your application can resume The spooled file

is then given to the printer If spooling wasn’t available, your application would have to wait until your print job had completed printing before resuming activity.

Configuring & Implementing…

Additional advanced options include the following:

■ Hold mismatched documents Checks the printer setup against therequirements of the print job and keeps any jobs that don’t match in theprint queue

■ Print spooled documents first Instructs your computer to print allspooled jobs first

■ Keep printed documents Holds print jobs in the print queue afterthey are printed in case they need to be printed again

■ Enable advanced printing features Turns on the advance printingfeatures, such as page order and booklet printing.The features availabledepend on the make of your printer

The Printing Defaults… button changes the default document properties for all users Clicking Print Processor… brings up the window shown in

Figure 13.33.The purpose of changing the print processor is to allow different

options for your print jobs.The Separator Page… button is demonstrated in

Figure 13.34 Click Browse to locate the separator page (a page that prints

between print jobs to keep them apart) that you want to use

Figure 13.33Selecting a Print Processor

Figure 13.34Selecting a Separator Page

Security TabThe Security tab controls who has access and the type of access allowed to theprinter.When you create a printer by default everyone can print to it, but onlyadministrators can manage it.This does not mean that everyone must call anadministrator to manage print jobs.The Creator Owner group is automaticallygranted the Manage Documents permissions.This means that every user canmanage his own print jobs but not anyone else’s Figure 13.35 shows the defaultpermissions for a printer.

Using Availability Times

The most common way to use availability times is to give a user two ical printers pointing to the same printer (Remember, a logical printer is what you see in the Printers and Faxes folder, whereas a printer is the

log-actual physical device producing the output) Configure one printer to

be available all the time and name it Normal Print Jobs Configure the other printer to be available after hours and name it Large Print Jobs.

Instruct your user to send all large jobs to the Large Print Jobs printer.

This way, large jobs are queued to run at night and they don’t congest the printer during the day The large job will be waiting on the print device for the user when they come in the next day.

Designing & Planning…

Figure 13.35The Security Tab of a Printer’s Properties