Managing an office printer

I'm managing the office network here at work. But our printer is kind of a black hole in my knowledge.

I'm quite confused about how the computers in the office access it.

The printer is a Toshiba e-studio 3511. It's over a metre high, and it's your typical copier/scanner/fax/printer. We have 5 machines connected to it, plus the office server.

It has three cables:
1. Black power cable. connects to mains
2. Ethernet cable. Goes up the wall, through a cable tidy, and into the router
3. Another ethernet cable. goes into the wall behind the microwave.

Our office server runs windows server 2003 (for now, replacing with debian soon). Even though windows is configured to be a Print Server, the printer is not server-dependant. I've confirmed this by printing from terminals with the server powered off.

Our office network currently runs a domain, but it has no roaming profiles. ie, each user and their settings, exist on each of the terminals. those settings include printer access.

My problem is that one account on one of the machines, has no printer access. The printer just doesn't show as an option. So my primary purpose in opening this thread, is to figure out how to put it there.

I've confirmed that it's not a server/domain issue. That account can print from any of the other terminals, and that terminal can print when logged in as any other account.

in any office app, the printer is shown as an option (on other terminals) as:
Status: Idle
Type: TOSHIBA e-STUDIO4511SeriesPCL5c OR TOSHIBA e-STUDIO4511SeriesPCL6 (note two options, and I'm aware that neither of these actually match the printer name)
where: IP_192.168.1.199.v2 OR IP_192.168.1.199.v1

I've had zero success trying to add the printer by plugging this information into the Find Printer dialog, so I'm kind of unsure what to do.

does anyone have any advice ?

 

Have you tried to uninstall and then reinstall the printer driver? If not try that and tell me what happens.

 

the find printer dialog contains

Name
Location
Model

I tried typing the IP into the Location field, to no success.

 

Get the driver for the device.
Goto Start>Settings>Printers and faxes
Add a printer
<Next>
Local Printer - uncheck Automatically detect <Next>
Select Create New Port > drop down to Standard TCP/IP <Next>
<Next>
Type the IP address in the field <Next>
and so on just like any other printer.

The find printer dialog works if the printer is shared by the server & listed in the domain.
Also #3 ethernet cable? maybe phone for the FAX. vice versa.


Whats funny is this, addding a network printer isvery common thing that was not even mentioned when I was in school studying networking.

 

Local printer is greyed out. I guess this is because the account is not administrator.
however, the administrator is able to print fine, so logging into administrator to add it doesn't seem useful.

Also, it may be a server printer after all. it's listed in the windows server 2003 config as a shared printer, and yet, computers which can already access it, are able to print without the server being online. it is very confusing.

It is. Does anyone know how to find it's location on the server to point a client to that, perhaps ?

 

I had this problem about a week ago. The profile was corrupted. I ended up just reformatting the computer. You could go an alternate path and just recreate the profile and delete the existing one.

 

I could do.

But that won't really solve the problem, as the newly created one would still need to find the printer.

To clarify, I can't find the printer on any account, on any machine. Although most accounts on most machines already have it in their list and so can use it.

But I've tried pasting info exactly from those that do have it, and it still doesn't detect a printer.

 

oh, another thought.

Since every other account on that machine has printer access, would it be feasible to somehow copy and paste from another profile, into the problem one?

Or even entirely clone an existing profile and rename it appropriately.

 

That will work but your underlying problem is still there. You need to find out why the pc's are not able to connect to the printer. Have you tried to reinstall the printer driver?

 

I've not yet.
there's a drivers menu on the server that has several drivers available, (x86, x64, itanium) which are auto downloaded to clients.

The underlying problem is something I literally don't care about. I just need THIS one computer working.

The reason why is that the server is messed up in many ways, the most notable of which is that installation of a component (Terminal Server License Server) was never properly done, and now cannot be completed without microsoft license keys (that we don't have).

Long story short, the server is being wiped and replaced with a debian/samba box. If you're interested in that, you can follow the whole story over here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=54191

There's a strong possibility the server is the underlying problem. If it is, then any effort to diagnose it is a complete waste, and time is valuable so it's a risk not worth doing.

What I need is just a band-aid to make it work for now so someone in the office isn't getting constantly slowed down by their lack of printer access.

So....
If it will work, then how ?

 

Log on as a local admin & add the printer via my directions.
or

I might ...lol
go to start>run> \\servername & hit <enter>
an explorer widown will pop up with all the server shares, then just double click on the printer. But remember when you kill the server - printing will no longer work that way.

 

totally not necessart

this worked!
problem solved.

lesson for the future: the msoffice find printer dialog is useless

Thank you

/thread

 

[thread]

Hello again folks. Need to resurrect this a bit.

I'm still having problems with the printer. It feels like an unpredictable beast, always failing when needed most. Never the actual printer that fails, just the ability of certain machines to print to it.

Right now, one of the office machines is unable to print. It's unable to even TRY to print. Attempting to print from notepad, msoffice, etc, crashes that application and does not print. Like, in word, the print... dialog doesn't appear, it crashes before that.

Connecting to the printer the normal way causes it to appear as an available printer, but the above issue still happens.

I've also tried installing it as a local printer like this http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kb...teronlyonceforallusersoftheNTworkstation.html

The most searchbombiest url ever. But that didn't work with using the printer location as the port: \\192.168.1.199\pcl5c

Any theories as to what may be wrong ? Most likely a problem on one machine as the rest of the PCs have print access.

 

ok, working again. i ended up getting third-party adobe drivers as a temporary fix, while I try to get it working as a shared domain printer.