Printing

Plug and Play printer is not automatically installing

You can instruct your computer to automatically detect and install Plug and Play printers when using the Add Printer wizard.

Windows 2000 comes with more printer drivers than ever before, but if the printer driver you need is not included with Windows 2000, your printer is not automatically installed, even if it is Plug and Play. To install such a printer, use the Add Printer wizard, and click Have Disk to provide the needed drivers.

If required drivers are available, you might want to restart your computer. Some printers are manually-detected Plug and Play devices, which require that you restart your computer before the printer is installed. Manually-detected Plug and Play printers typically use parallel port connections.

Cannot find a printer when searching by location

Searching by location requires that you use Windows 2000 or some other Active Directory-enabled client.

Make sure you are creating searches that match the printer location format used in your environment. For more information about printer location formats, see Printer Locations and Active Directory earlier in this chapter.

Bidirectional printer problem

If you encounter a problem with bidirectional printing, disable bidirectional printing and resend your print job.

To disable bidirectional printing, do the following:

1. Click Start , point to Settings , and then click Printers .

2. Right-click the bidirectional printer, and then click Properties .

3. Click the Ports tab, clear Enable bidirectional support , and then click OK .

You do not have required permissions

If a printer requires security permissions, you must have the appropriate rights as provided by your user account or by a user group to which you belong.

Choose an alternate printer that does not require permissions, or that requires permissions that you have, or ask your administrator to grant you permissions to use the printer.

Bad printer port or improperly formatted data

Incorrectly configured ports can cause printing to fail. Typically, LPR ports include an IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and let DNS resolve the address followed by a queue name. In such a situation, there can be a resolution error for the FQDN or users might enter the Windows 2000 queue name, rather than the LPDs queue name. If either of these events occur, errors such as Bad printer port or Improperly formatted data can occur.

To find out if an incorrect FQDN name is being used, review the event log for your computer for event ID 2004. Event ID 2004 indicates that the target LPD did not respond as expected, which can occur with an incorrect FQDN.

A bad printer port or improperly formatted data error can also occur if users configure their computer to print directly to the printer or to use bidirectional communication, when the hardware they are using does not support these functions.

To solve these problems with the TCP/IP port you are using for the printer, try configuring the Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor for your printer.

To configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor

1. From the Start menu, point to Settings , and click Printers .

2. Right-click the printer whose TCP/IP port monitor you want to configure, and then click Properties .

3. On the Ports tab, click the TCP/IP Port your printer uses, and then click Configure Port .

The dialog box you use to configure the TCP/IP Port Monitor appears in Figure 14.16.

Figure 14.16 Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor Dialog Box

To solve problems with the TCP/IP port you are using for a printer, try the following changes:

• Check Port Name , Printer Name , or IP Address in the Configure Standard TCP/IP Port Monitor dialog box and correct them, if necessary.

• Try toggling from one protocol to another. Some printers require you use one or the other.

• Try enabling LPR Byte Counting. Some printers required that jobs accurately represent their size. For more information about byte counting, see New Ways to Send Print Jobs earlier in this chapter.

Printer jobs go to the queue, but do not print

If you are using a multifunction peripheral (MFP), DOT4 might not have properly detected your print device at startup. Shut down your computer and printer, then turn on your printer followed by your computer. Typically, DOT4 now recognizes all features of your MFP.

Graphic images do not print as expected

• Disable enhanced metafile spooling (EMF).

• Try printing to the PostScript driver, if the printer supports it. If this works, the problem is with the UniDriver.

• If PostScript fails, there is a problem with the GDI or the UniDriver that is working with the application to created the print job. To verify that it is an application-related problem, try printing another document from another application.

• Try printing shorter jobs or fewer jobs at a time. You might be exceeding the print spoolers capacity.

Pages are only partially printed

• Check that there is sufficient memory to print the document.

• Pages only partially print when the page size of the document you are trying to print is bigger than the page size available for the printer to print.

• If text is missing, verify whether the missing text uses a font which is valid and is installed.

• The printer might not have adequate toner. Try replacing the printers toner cartridge.

Printing is slow

• If the print server is taking an unusually long time to render the job, try defragmenting the servers disk and check that there is adequate space for temporary files on the hard disk.

• If you are using printer pooling to handle a large number of jobs, and print jobs are taking a long time to get to the top of queue, consider adding more printers to the pool to distribute the print jobs over a larger set of printers.

PostScript printer returns an Out of Memory error

To print the current document, you must allocate more memory for the printer or send smaller print jobs.

To add more PostScript memory, modify Available PostScript Memory on the Device Settings tab in Printer Properties . You must have Manage printer rights to change Available PostScript Memory .

Break large print jobs into smaller parts. For example, for a 10-page print job, you can send the first five pages in one print job and then send the last five pages in a second print job. This reduces the amount of printer memory required.

Computer stalls while printing

For local printers:

• Check that the appropriate printer driver is installed. Reinstall if necessary.

• Check for adequate space on the hard disk.

For printers on a network:

• Check that the server has enough free hard disk space.

• Try disabling EMF spooling, and send the job in RAW format.