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KromptonFlag for United States of America

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Need imformation about Printer Pooling on Windows 2003 Server

Here's the situation:
I have two HP 4350dtn Printers w/ 96MB RAM directly connected to our network using their built-in Jet Direct Card.
I thought it would be fairly simple to enable pooling between these two but alas nothing's ever easy.
Both printers were individually installed as network printers to a (Jet Direct) tcp/ip port on our server.
Then I renamed one to include -pool in the name. Shared it, enabled pooling and checked the additional tcp/ip port I wanted associated with the other 4350. When I sent two 20page PDF print jobs I expected one to go to each.
Well they both spooled to the same printer one after the other as would happen if there were only one.
I then removed the printers and ports from the server and tried again. The second time I installed the printers as "local" but pointing them to the recreated tci/ip ports. Same results.
Additionally I turned one of the printer off to see if that would cause a job to go to the other printer. Nope! It just sat in the queue indicating the port of the printer that was off. The printer never even reflected that it was offline.

Here are my questions:
1)      What am I missing with regard to setting up a printer pool?
2)      What signals the server that a printer is busy? (Does all 96MB of memory need to be full with more waiting to spool?!? I think it should be considered busy if it is printing anything.)

Thanks to all for any leads.
Avatar of Brian Pierce
Brian Pierce
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To create a printer pool:

1) from Print Manager choose the queue you want to go to multiple printers

2) choose properties from the pulldown menu

3) choose details

4) In the Printer Details dialog box, select port names from the Print To
   Additional Ports dialog box that correspond to the ports where you have
   connected printers

To add or change the port name

1) In the Printer Properties dialog box, select Network Printer in the
   Print To dialog box.

2) In the Print Destinations dialog box, select Local Port

3) Type the name of the port you want to add in the Enter A Port Name
   dialog box (this can include redirected ports to shared printers), and
   then choose the OK button.

The printers will appear as a single printing device to network users.
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ASKER

KCTS,

Thanks for the reply sorry I couldn't respond sooner. I am having a bit of difficulty following you steps.

You said :
"1) from Print Manager choose the queue you want to go to multiple printers"
     By "Print Manager " do you mean "Administrative Tools> Print Management" ?
     and if so does "choose the queue" mean highlight the Printer name in the right-hand window?
Then with your step 3 I can't find any "Details" tab anywhere?

This seems like what I did before but got nowhere with.
1) Open Printer & Faxes
2) Highlight the printer I wanted to be able to print to multiple Print Devices.
3) Open the Properties for this printer and select the Ports tab
4) Check the "Enable Printer Pooling" box
5) Check the additional ports that a job can be sent to
6) Close Properties.
That should be it, right?
These setps got me nowhere thus my above question.

Thanks.
I went through the steps to set-up a pool again and with some testing I found that it was working. It was probably working the first time I set it up. Who knows!
I unplugged the LAN cord and sent a job. The job was placed in the queue for the printer port from which I had removed the LAN connection. The queue, as expected, shortly reflected an error that the document failed to print. Subsequent jobs were routed to the other device. Reinstalling the LAN allowed the first job to finish.

I guess what I am really looking for is a more fine grained control of the server.
1) Can I set-up a pool that will always send a job to a device in a set order? or
2) Set-up a pool that swaps which device will get the next submitted job?
Here's what I would like to have happen:
Scenario 1
Pool-1 > Always sends job to Printer-1 with failover to Printer-2
Pool-2 > Always sends job to Printer-2 with failover to Printer-1

Scenario 2
Pool>  (two jobs submitted back-to-back) First job goes to Printer-1 with failover to Printer-2 second job goes to Printer-2 with failover to Printer-1. Later a third job is sent and it goes to Printer-1 with failover to Printer-2. Later still the forth job goes to Printer-2 with failover to Printer-1. and so on&..
Does anyone know if this type of control is possible?
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Krompton
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