Domain printer for domain user with workgroup pc

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Hi,

We have a contractor that uses his own laptop at our office. His laptop is part of a workgroup. He has a domain account and has no problems accessing various resources.

However, we have a network printer and he is a member of the group that has permission to print to it. The problem being that when he logs on to the computer he always has to add the printer before he can use it.

Is there a way to get the printer to prompt him for his logon credentials when he wishes to print? At the moment it just tells him the printer is unavailable so he has to delete the logical printer and then add it again.

This is in a W2K3 environment with XP.

Cheers

 

Hi,
Would it be possible for you to create a login script on the DC which installs the printer.. If not, how about a batch file in \\server\NETLOGON\contractor.bat

REM Add printer
echo Installing [printer name] on [servername]!
RunDll32.EXE printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /n \\server\printer

echo Your default printer is [printername] on [server]
REM Set Default Printer
RunDll32.EXE printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /y /n \\server\printer

Cheers
G

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

Sparky: I was hoping for a solution where he just clicks to print and then he would be prompted for his logon credentials. Thanks anyway.

Garyb: The only problem with the logon script is that he is logging onto his pc locally. He uses the domain account to get to his email and mapped drives.

There could be times when he's logged on locally to his pc and then gone straight to print. In this situation he wouldn't have actually logged on to the domain yet so the script wouldn't have run.

Thanks for the script though, I may try and implement it some other way.

 

Why dont you just setup IP printing instead of adding the printer from the domain?

All you have to do is once he is logged on, add printer, select local make sure the autodetect is deselected and then select IP_port instead of LPT and thats it. This is what I did at my company and it worked perfectly without him having to login and add printer every time.

Hope this helps.

 

Stoney,

Is your network printer a HP printer?

 

Yes it is. It's a HP2605DN Colour Laserjet.

That's how I configured the printer when I attached it to the print server. Do I need to remove the logical printer from the print server and then add it to each individual users pc?

Cheers,

 

Hmm, possibly. But we need to restrict access to this printer. We don't want everyone printing to it because it costs too much in colour toner cartridges!

 

Ok thanks. I'll give that a whirl on Monday

 

Stoney,

Does this contractor use his/her laptop at other companies?

 

Yes he does.

 

Stoney,

Any chance he might use HP printers elsewhere?

 

Possibly. I'm not too sure what the setup is at the other sites he works at. I can find out though.

Are you thinking I should install some HP print software on his laptop or something?

 

Stoney,

I have an HP Officejet d145 with a JetDirect Ethernet Print Server. Once upon a time, I installed the drivers onto my brother's laptop and printing worked. Then he unplugged from my network then went off to work in other networks. When he returned back home, my brother was having "printing issues." So when I tried to troubleshoot the problem, I noticed that the "HP Officejet d145" printer drivers were nowhere to be found. So I popped in the Officejet d145 driver CD into his CD-ROM drive to install the drivers again. During the HP Officejet d145 driver installation process, the HP software detected another HP printer driver and required that the other HP printer driver be uninstalled prior to the reinstallation of the Officejet d145 driver. So after the uninstallation of the "other HP printer driver" the Officejet d145 printer drivers started installing. Then once again, my brother left my network to go to work. After returning from work, once again, the same "print problem" occured with absent Officejet d145 printer driver.

So, from my experience:

1. It is irrelevant if he has a user account.
2. It is irrelevant if it's a network printer/print server or even a local printer.
3. It is irrelevant if the laptop is part of the domain or a workgroup.

Thanks to HP "technology" with the print driver requiring exclusive existence, there may be no practical solution to your problem that I learned "to be flexible for a non-domain laptop" to be able to print.

 

Sparky,

I have an HP Officejet d145 with a JetDirect Ethernet "IP Printing" Print Server. Even I have issues with "trying to be flexible" with my brother's laptop that's used for his work on networks other than mine. There seems to be some kind of HP Print Driver code that requires exclusive existence that actually uninstalls currently installed HP printer drivers from the computer prior to installing the HP Officejet d145 in network IP printing mode.

 

r.h.lee: Thanks for the info. That could well put a spanner in the works if he does use HP printers elsewhere. I shall have to get some more information out of him and see what the score is.

Sparky: I don't think so. The other day he had his domain email open so he would have authenticated for that. The printer was unavailable to him until he added the logical printer again.

I'll try getting him to add the printer through IP rather than through the print server and see what happens. I'll also see what other types of printer he uses when he's not at our office.

Thanks again for the help everyone