Printers

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The current A+ Operating System Technologies exam will most likely make sure that you can resolve basic Windows NT or Windows 2000 printing problems. Troubleshooting printing-related issues from within either of these two operating systems is basically the same.

There are several questions that you should ask yourself and/or your customer who is having difficulty printing.

• Is the printer you are sending a document to set as the default printer in the Printers applet of My Computer or Control Panel? If the desired printer is not set as the default printer, you can rectify this situation by right-clicking the installed printer icon located in the Printers applet and selecting “Set as Default Printer.” Print the document again. Another way to direct a print job to a specific printer is to select the File menu option from within the document you wish to print. Next, select the Print option, and from the Printer Name drop-down menu option, select the installed printer to which you would like to direct the print job.

• Is there enough memory installed on the Print Server or user’s workstation to handle the print job or jobs that have been submitted to print? It is very common to experience “out of memory” errors when attempting to print to a locally installed or networked printer. More often than not, there is simply not enough physical memory installed on the system to handle the transition of the print job from the system to the printer. This can be resolved by installing more memory in the system itself.

• Is the printer spooler service stalled on the shared network printer? The printer spooler service is a service that manages print jobs sent to a Windows NT or Windows 2000 shared network printer. If a print job or multiple print jobs are stalled on a network print server running the spooler service, the simple solution is to stop and start the printer spooler service. In Windows NT, the Services applet is located in the Control Panel. In Windows 2000, the Services applet is located within the Control Panel/Administrative Tools applet.

• Do you or the customer have rights to print to the shared printer? As discussed earlier in this chapter under “Resource Sharing and Drive Mapping,” file, folder, and printer shares can all be assigned access rights within Windows NT and Windows 2000. If you or a customer cannot access a certain printer share on a network, you may not have been granted the proper rights.

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