Printer problems with AD

[Jonathan Butler]

I have a very weird Printer Problem. I have a Lexmark
Printer shared from my Win2k Domain Controller. I have a
mixed enviroment of XP and win98 Workstations. We also
have roaming profiles running with about 600 users. My
users had problems printing to one of our lexmark
printers. The printer says it is not connected. If I goto
the server and print it prints fine, and from our win98
stations it prints fine. I did re add the printer after
resharing it as a different name. Seemed to print fine. I
changed it back b/c I would have to readd the printer to
each workstation and profile. I am wondering since XP
workstations are the only one having problems if the
problem is with AD. I don't seem to be having any other
serious problems, but I did have problems with my
eventlogs a week ago, before this happened.
(History) I setup at the start of school a default
profile with the prints and software in the profiles, so
when the roaming profiles are created, the printers would
be there as well. I also tried to delete a profile and
recreate one and the printer still didn't work. If you
readd the printer under a different share name, it can be
added and it works. The win98 computer can print to it
all day long but not XP, Any Ideas's???????

Help Thank

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Jonathan,

Here is a stupid question: did you add the WIN XP drivers to the print
server? When you go on the print server and to that particular printer you
can right click it and select properties. There should be several tabs
there. One of them should have a box where you can check to see what
drivers are loaded ( based on OS ). I am not familiar with the Lexmark
printers as I have pretty much dealt exclusively with HP.

Normally, I see problems the other way: the WINXP clients can print all day
long but the WIN98 clients cannot.

Also, and this may or may not have anything to do with your problem: is your
DNS set up correctly? What I mean is, all of your clients are receiving an
IP Address from some sort of DHCP 'device' - whether it is a WIN2000/WIN2003
DHCP Server or some Router/Firewall device. Do the clients also get the
Options? Option 003, 006, 015, 044 and 046 would be the ones in question.
And is the DNS information from your local / internal AS DNS and -NOT- from
your external / ISP DNS?

HTH,

Cary

 

[Guest]

I do know that the drivers are there by right clicking on
the printer on the server. I have the XP Driver loaded as
aditional drivers. Like I said I can readd the printer
and it worked fine, but that is a problem when my users
are blocked from adding new printer by GPO restrictions.
I will check the DNS and see if I notice and thing weird.
For XP to print it resolve the printer through DNS? I
will check and see, I know all my XP computers point to
my AD GC for the DNS. I use DNS also for foward lookups.
Thanks and I will post if I get this resolved. Thanks for
the reply, and yes anything at this point helps!