Managing Access to Resources and Managing Printing – MCSE 70-290

Changing the Location of the Print Spooler

There are many reasons you may need to change the location of the print spooler. The primary reason is you would like it on a different hard drive because of the size of the printed documents.

You could also want to change the location of the print spooler to:

• Improve performance
• Ensure security
• Improve reliability
• Reduce fragmentation on the boot partition

Changing the print spooler is a relatively easy task:

1. Open the Printers and Faxes control panel.
2. Right-click in any blank area and choose Server Properties.
3. Click on the Advanced tab.

1. Change the Spool folder to the location you want print jobs to be spooled in.
2. Click OK.

Watch this short animated clip to see how to change the Print Spooler location.

Setting Printer Priorities

You can also set the priority of certain printers. This allows print jobs from that printer to be printed before other printers on the server. If you have a large number of print jobs flowing through your print server and HR needs priority over any other group, you may set the HR printers to higher priority than other departments. The default priority is 1 (which is the lowest). You can set priorities up to 99.

1. Open the Printers and Faxes Control Panel.
2. Right-click on the printer you want to change and choose Properties.
3. Click on the Advanced tab.

1. Change the Priority field to whatever priority you would like for that printer. The range is 1 to 99 with 99 being the highest priority.
2. Click OK.

Scheduling Printer Availability

In addition, you can also set printers so they are only available for a certain time period during the day. This may be useful for restricted printers (such as HR or color printers). If you do not want people printing after certain hours, this is a handy setting.

You could also use this for security reasons. You can setup two printers on the server for the same physical printer and set one to 24 hours and the other to only business hours. You could then set security so users with limited security rights can only print to it during the day and other users can print any time.

1. Open the Printers and Faxes Control Panel.
2. Right-click on the printer you want to change and choose Properties.
3. Click on the Advanced tab.

1. Click on the Available from radio button and enter the two times you want the printer to be able to be printed to.
2. Click OK.

Configuring a Printing Pool

In a high printing environment, you may have several of the same model of printers. To efficiently allow users to print and get the most use out of your printers, you can use Printer Pooling. Printer Pooling allows your users to print to one printer but have the server automatically distribute to jobs to any number of the same model of printer.

For example, if you had three HP LaserJet 5 printers, you could setup a print pool for the users to print to one printer and have it print out on any of the three printers in the pool.

1. Open the Printers and Faxes Control Panel.
2. Add a new printer using the earlier instructions, or choose an existing printer you want to use as the starting point for the pool.
3. Right-click on the printer and choose Properties.
4. Click on the Ports tab.

1. Click the Enable printer pooling checkbox.
2. Select the ports above you want to add to the printer or use the Add Port wizard to add a new port.
3. Click OK.




wizard to add a new port.

In this section, you learned:

• Printing in Windows Server 2003
• Setting up a TCP/IP printer
• Managing printing
• Managing access to printers
• Managing printer drivers
• Implementing printer locations
• Changing the location of the print spooler
• Setting printer priorities
• Scheduling printer availability
• Configuring a printing pool

Practice Exercises

1. Create a TCP/IP printer on your network.

2. Control access by specifying a specific group which is allowed to print to the printer.

3. Add printer drivers for older client operating systems.

4. Move the print spooler to a different folder or drive on the server.

5. Change the printer to a high priority.

6. Set the printer so it is only available between 6:00 am and 8:00 pm.