Server 2003 and NT Workstations

[Guest]

We're having some issues with printing from NT workstations to shared
printers on a Windows Server 2003 which we've just installed.

All workstations are NT and they have an LPT1 HP4000 PCL6 driver installed
locally. Their logon script then maps the LPT1 port to the network printer.
Printing via this method is fine.

If they want to choose a different printer they use the Add Printer Wizard
and connect to the shared printers that way. The 2003 server has the
appropriate PCL6 NT drivers installed.

Problem 1 - More and more clients are reporting that when the try to print
to the network printer their jobs are formatted incorrectly - off centre etc.
When they check the properties of the printer it brings up A6 or something
else obscure as the paper size. Sometimes the driver reports the printer as
an HP2100 instead of an HP4000. When I check the printer details on the
server it all looks fine. Later on it works ok. The problem is intermitent.

Problem 2 - when a user checks the printers folder there are no printers
shown. They get various errors relating to the RPC server being unavailable.
They try again and the printers appear. Sometimes they will try to check
the printer properties - again they occasionally get RPC errors. Check again
and they are fine. Sometimes they can't add a printer because the RPC server
is unavailable or too busy to answer.

I'm stumped.

Thanks for reading and for any help/suggestions offered.

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

Unfortunately, printing in a mixed NT 4/2000 or 2003 environment is fraught
with difficulties. The HP article at
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=bpl13043
sheds some light on the situation and offers some suggestions, not all of
which may palatable. See in particular references to "compatible drivers".
(Note that this article is a bit old and refers to Windows Server 2003 as
".Net server").

The NT 4 printer driver archtitecture is different from the 2000/2003 one
and it is common for the drivers for these two architetcures to have
difficulties inter-operating, even when they are "compatible". Backwards
compatibility is not easy to achieve and quite often isn't.

One possibility is to build a Windows NT 4 server just to be a print server
for your Windows NT workstations.

Support for Windows NT is coming to an end (see
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=gp/lifean3).

It may not be easy for all kinds of reasons, but if at all possible, I
suggest upgrading the workstations to Windows XP.

Sorry to be unhelpful, but I've been struggling with this kind of issue for
years and there is no simple answer. Our print servers were all Windows NT
and it proved essentially impossible to get printing from XP workstations to
work for some printer models. For some models, there were no problems, but
for others, we had to just give up - it took too much time and hassle.
We've now moved to Windows 2000 Print Servers.

Your situation is somewhat reversed (up to date server, old workstations)
from ours, but the fundamental problem is the same - lack of backwards
compatiblity for printers and printer drivers.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Bruce.

I'll play a bit more to see if there is anything else I can do to make this
work. My backup plan is to install the printers on an NT server as you
suggested - especially in view of the amount of time I'm spending on this. I
have 2 servers available for this so I'll do this if I can't resolve the
issues in the next few days.

All our clients will be moving to XP some time next year - the company I
work for are rolling an XP build out to all desktops across Europe. So this
arrangement needs to only work for the next 12 months.

Cheers.

 

[Bruce Sanderson]

Good. I think your users will appreciate Windows XP, once they get used to
it - change is always resisted by some people, no matter what you do!