Help needed on printer config

[JM]

I'm helping on a small Windows 2000 Server network/domain. Please tell me
what info I leave out:

There are about 13 computers and 3-4 printers.
The computers are part of the domain users and computers, but the printers
are not.
The printers show as local printers to two of the machines (running XP Pro),
but they are not directly connected.
The main printer in question has a small HP print server inserted in the
back of the printer.
This print server is connected to the network.
I cannot find the IP address of the print server/printer
This printer is shown as owned by one of the XP Pro machines (computer A).
I need that printer shared to another computer (computer B).
I can share the printer in computer A's "printers and faxes" okay.
However, on computer B I do not have the option to add printer unless I'm
administrator.
When I log on as Administrator I can add the printer okay.
When I log back in as the user of computer B, it is not added.

My question: How was the printer added as local to computer A when the
print server is connected to the network, not to the computer itself.
Perhaps during the setup of the print server? Perhaps some print server
utility was installed on computer A which allowed direct ownership with IP
address of print server? I did not have a chance to look too closely at
computer A.

How can I add this printer to computer B? Should I change permissions of
computer B user temporarily?

Sorry if I left out critical info or jumbled this all up. I will clarify
anything necessary.

thank you,

j

 

[Kurt]

Network printers (printers with their own network card or a hardware "print
server" like a jetdirect) can be installed as local printers. A local
printer (in Microsoft terminology) is a driver that prints directly to a
device (using a local print queue) rather than sending the data to another
computer, which would maintain a print queue for all jobs from other
computers. If the printer is installed on the XP pro box as a local printer,
look on the properties page for the printer in the "ports" tab and you'll
find a standard TCP/IP port which should tell you the ip address of the
network print server. It is best to share the printer and print to it that
way just because if a large job gets queued up by one computer, other jobs
may time out waiting for that big one to finish. If you send the jobs to the
XP Pro box, it will queue them up one at a time and there will be no timeout
errors. In a very small office, it usually works fine either way.

To install a printer for a user without those rights there are a couple of
ways you can accomplish it.The easiest way for just a couple of computers is
to just add the users domain account to the local administrators group,
install the printer, then remove it. If you need to install it on a bunch of
computers you can script it using "rundll32.exe". You'll have to assign,
through group policy, a startup (rather than logon) script, because the
startup script runs with the necessary rights whereas a logon script runs
only with the user's rights.

....kurt

 

[JM]

thank you, kurt, for the excellent response.

j