Windows 7 : Troubleshooting Network Printers (part 2) - Group Policy Settings for Troubleshooting , Troubleshooting Server Problems

3. Group Policy Settings for Troubleshooting

Windows 7 provides many Group Policy settings that allow you to configure the behavior of printers and printer drivers in the Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Printers node. In addition, you can configure client computers to connect automatically to a shared printer by adding the printer to the Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Deployed Printers or User Configuration\Windows Settings\Deployed Printers node.

The following Group Policy settings can be useful for troubleshooting printers on computers running Windows 7:

• Execute Print Drivers In Isolated Processes By default, the print spooler keeps print drivers in a separate process. This enables the print spooler to continue to function even if a print driver fails. The default setting is best for troubleshooting, but if you find that the print spooler is failing, you should verify that this setting has not been disabled.

• Override Print Driver Execution Compatibility Setting Reported By Print Driver Print Drivers provide a driver isolation compatibility flag that indicates whether the print driver should be run in a separate process from the print spooler. If you enable this setting (which is disabled by default), the print spooler runs all print drivers in a separate process, regardless of their driver isolation compatibility flag. If you find that the print spooler is failing, you should enable this setting.

• Allow Print Spooler To Accept Client Connections This setting prevents a computer from acting as a print server. If you experience problems sharing a printer, verify that this setting is enabled (the default).

4. Troubleshooting Server Problems

In home environments, users typically connect their computers to their printers using a universal serial bus (USB) cable. In business environments, printers are often shared between many users. To connect many different users to a printer, printers must be accessible from the network.

There are two common methods for sharing a printer on a network:

• Connecting the printer directly to the network Printers must have networking capabilities, which require them to have an Ethernet port or wireless network capabilities.

• Connecting the printer to a computer and sharing it on the network In this scenario, the computer that is connected directly to the printer becomes the print server. All recent client and server versions of Microsoft Windows are capable of acting as print servers.

Choosing Whether to Use a Print Server

Connecting a printer directly to the network can reduce your upfront costs by not requiring you to purchase or configure a server. In addition, a printer that is shared directly from the network does not go offline if a server fails. Depending on the management capabilities of the networked printer, a direct network connection might be the best choice for your environment. However, configuring a computer to act as the print server offers several advantages:

• Integration with Windows security When you share a printer from Windows, you can configure which Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) accounts have access to print or perform different management functions.

• Integration with AD DS browsing You can publish printers to your AD DS and allow users to browse to find the closest printer.

• Automatic installation of printer drivers Windows print servers can provide print drivers to client computers the first time they connect, simplifying management.

• Integration with enterprise management tools Problems with printers generate events in the event log, which you can manage using standard enterprise management tools, including Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager.

Requirements for a Print Server

For a computer to share printers, it must have two services running:

• Server This service is required for sharing either files or printers across the network.

• Print Spooler This service is required for printing.

Client computers connecting to the shared printer require the Workstation service and the Print Spooler service. If a required service does not start, verify that all the service's prerequisite services are started. Then, review events in the System event log and the Applications And Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\PrintService\Admin event log.

How to Share a Printer

In Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7, follow these steps to manage a shared printer:

1. Click Start, and then click Devices And Printers.

2. Right-click the printer and then click Printer Properties. Do not click Properties; Printer Properties is in the middle of the shortcut list.

3. On the Sharing tab, select the Share This Printer check box. You then have three additional options:

   • Select the Render Print Jobs On Client Computers setting to reduce the processor performance impact on the server by forcing the client to do more of the print rendering. If your print server has more processing power than client computers and print performance does not suffer, clear this check box.

   • If you are part of an AD DS environment, you can select the List In Directory check box. This publishes the printer to AD DS, so that users can browse to find printers near their location.

   • Click Additional Drivers to select other processor types to store drivers for. Clients can download a driver automatically from the server if the driver type is available. When you click OK, you might be prompted to select a path where the driver is located. Click OK.

How to Manage Print Jobs on a Printer

In Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7, follow these steps to manage a shared printer:

1. Click Start, and then click Devices And Printers.

2. Double-click the printer you want to manage.

3. Click See What's Printing.

4. Windows displays the print queue, a first-in, first-out collection of documents waiting to be printed. You can right-click any document and then click Pause, Restart, or Cancel.

Troubleshooting the Print Queue

If you ever encounter a document that won't leave the print queue, you can clear it by restarting the Print Spooler service. You can use the Services node in the Computer Management tool, or you can run net stop spooler and net start spooler from an administrative command prompt. To restart the Print Spooler service in a single command, run net stop spooler && net start spooler.

If restarting the print spooler does not remove unwanted documents from the print queue, you can remove them manually by following these steps:

1. First, stop the Print Spooler service, as described earlier in this section.

2. Next, use Windows Explorer to delete all files in the %WinDir%\System32\Spool\Printers folder. This folder has two files for every document in the print queue: one .SHD file, and one .SPL file.

3. Start the Print Spooler service.