Printers are created with the Add Printer icon in the Control Panel. The printer name, driver, and destination port must be specified.

Each logical printer defined represents a print queue. More than one logical printer can connect to a physical printer. Print queues can define a priority and hours of active printing.

High priority, 24 hours    Æ
Low priority, 24 hours    Æ       
Nighttime printing only   Æ

Connection made with Control Panel Æ ÅDrivers download automatically

When the printer is created the print driver is installed into the folder ...\system32\spool\drivers. This folder is automatically shared as print$ so that clients can have the driver automatically downloaded when they connect to the printer. Drivers for NT, Windows 9X, and Itanium can be also loaded as shown if the following dialog.

When a shared printer is created, it is automatically published in the Active Directory. The printer objects is only visible when computers are viewed as contains. The printer appears within the computer container as shown in the dialog below. To make the printer visible for regular users, it should be moved to a normal container like an OU.

Security

Access to printers is controlled by a DACL. Standard permissions are Print, Manage Printers, Manage Documents. Administrators, Power Users, Print and Server Operators are given full control by default. Everyone has Print access to they can send output to the printer and the Manage Documents permission is granted to Creator Owner so that users can manager their own documents, but not others. Print access can be audited by setting the SACL.

Remote management includes

• Viewing the print queue
• Pausing and resuming a document
• Deleting a document from the queue
• Changing print order
• Changing the printer's properties

Keyboard Exercise

Use the Add Printer icon in the Control Panel to create a new printer. Use the Generic/Text Only driver to create a fake experimental printer object. Once created, investigate the printer properties.