Local print queues for remote printers

L

Larry

I have a number of dial-in computers (WinXP) with a
printer attached to the back of each. I need two-way
communication to those remote printers, ie. People from
home base can print to them, and well as the remote users
being able to print for themselves.

I have attempted to set things up in the following
manner. I have set up shares for the printers on all the
remote computers, then I set up those computers/printers
on my print server (W2K), effectively creating a share of
a share. The idea behind this is so that my print server
acts as a queue for the remote printers.

So far, I have been able to get the print jobs from other
clients to go to the print server and stay in the queue
until the remote computer comes on-line - the problem
arises when the print server tries to pump those jobs
through to the remote computer/printer, and the print
queue on the print server always comes up with following
error: "Error printing."
I can ping the remote computers and see the remote
printers, so Computer Name/IP resolution doesn't appear
to be the problem.

I'm trying to achieve it this way because one of my
applications won't release itself back to the user while
it's spooling a print job to a printer - over a remote
connection this could take some time. Another problem
with this application is that one module "hunts" for the
printers before it will let the user continue - if a
printer is offline, it won't let the user continue at all.

I figured if I can get the application to dump the print
job into the print server queue and let the print server
worry about getting the job to the remote computer, at
least the user can continue working.

Any ideas why the print jobs won't reach their
destinations, or is there a better solution?
 

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