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Enable non-Administrators to start / stop Print Spooler?
Hello. I have a computer lab with both XP and 2000 machines. Every once in a while one of the 2000 machines "forgets" its printers. I discovered the Microsoft Knowledge base article that says it is likely because the print spooler has not started, and tells you how to start it. That's all cool, but I would like to enable that capability for the students who are regular Users, without any administrative powers.
I thought I could accomplish this by changing the permissions on C:\winnt\system32\services
I am thinking that if I allow them full control of C:\winnt\system32 that might solve it, but that is out of the question as I don't want it to override what I've done with gpedit.msc. I need to ensure that students don't screw around with important settings and do things like set the background to a pornographic picture (Yes, they've been known to do it -- before I discovered the joys of poledit and gpedit.msc!) Yet I would like to allow just this one small bit of administrative freedom so that such a problem can be solved immediately instead of them having to wait until I can fix it.
Does anyone know how this can be accomplished? Thanks for listening!
I thought I could accomplish this by changing the permissions on C:\winnt\system32\services
I am thinking that if I allow them full control of C:\winnt\system32 that might solve it, but that is out of the question as I don't want it to override what I've done with gpedit.msc. I need to ensure that students don't screw around with important settings and do things like set the background to a pornographic picture (Yes, they've been known to do it -- before I discovered the joys of poledit and gpedit.msc!) Yet I would like to allow just this one small bit of administrative freedom so that such a problem can be solved immediately instead of them having to wait until I can fix it.
Does anyone know how this can be accomplished? Thanks for listening!
If you have the W2k Resource Kit, you can set the permissions using subinacl.exe.
To give, for example, the group "User" the permission to s*t*art, st*o*p, and *p*ause the spooler service, this command should do it:
subinacl /service Spooler /grant=User=TOP
If you don't have the W2k Resource Kit, you can try the one for W2k3, but the subinacl.exe from that version refuses to run properly (but then again, it might be because I'm not using an English Windows version).
Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en
To give, for example, the group "User" the permission to s*t*art, st*o*p, and *p*ause the spooler service, this command should do it:
subinacl /service Spooler /grant=User=TOP
If you don't have the W2k Resource Kit, you can try the one for W2k3, but the subinacl.exe from that version refuses to run properly (but then again, it might be because I'm not using an English Windows version).
Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en
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http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pstools.shtml
You are particularly interested in psservice.
Create a bat file (Spooler.bat) with the following commands.
@echo off
psservice [\\Computer [-u Username [-p Password]]] restart spooler
\\Computer is the computer on which you want to start the spooler service.
Username is a local account on \\Computer that has the necessary rights to stop and start the service.
Password is the password for the referenced account.
Using restart will stop and restart the service which can also fix other types of print server hangs.
Make sure that this file is hidden since it'll contain an admin user and password in it. Make sure that psservice and the location of the bat file are in the path.
Now create another bat (Bounce.bat) that calls Spooler.bat. Do not put the full path to spooler.bat in the bounce.bat. Bounce.bat and Spooler.bat should be somewhere in the path statement.
Put a shortcut to bounce.bat on the desktop if you want. By adding the layer of the second bat file you avoid someone simply right-clicking, Edit to view the contents of spooler.bat and seeing a valid admin user name and password. Granted it is a local admin account on the print server, so they won't have domain admin access.
Doing this from the command line instead of the shortcut might make it harder for the users to dig around and find bounce.bat.
I believe that the username and password specified for psservice does need to be able to log on locally to the target server. Worth trying. If it isn't necessary then create a separate admin account, deny logon local, and go.