Solved: Allowing non-Admin User to Clear and Restart Print Spooler on Windows 2003

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Windows Server 2003

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axygen

Allowing non-Admin User to Clear and Restart Print Spooler on Windows 2003

Hello,

I have a Windows 2003 AD Domain.

The print queue on one of our printers occasionally gets jammed with a print job. When this happens I must not only delete the job, but I need to restart the print spooler service to clear it out. I want to give this ability to the user in the form of a script.

I have tried using:

sc \\printserver stop spooler

from the user's computer, but I get the following error:

[SC] OpenSCManager FAILED 5:

Access is denied.

I have added the user to the "Print Operators" security group, but I am still getting the error message. I do not want to add the user to the Local Admins for the print server.

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Brian Pierce🇬🇧

Assign the user/group the right to "Manage printer" on the printer's security tab.

axygen

ASKER

I still get Access is denied when using the sc command.

Olski

How about creating a scheduled task to run the script? You can run a scheduled task manually and also set the admin credentials to do it without the user being able to discover the admin credentials.

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axygen

ASKER

@Olski - How would I go about setting this up? Do I set it up on their computer, or on the printserver?

Farhan Kazi🇦🇺

Greetings Axygen,

Why not giving Everyone or Print Operator full access over Print Spooler service...

SubInACL /Service Spooler /Grant=Everyone=F
OR
SubInACL /Service Spooler /Grant=Everyone=TOP

(TOP means they can sTart, stOp and Pause the service)

Get SubInACL from the Win2000
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en

More Info:

** Letting a User Start and Stop Services Without Granting the User Administrator Privileges
http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/print.cfm?articleid=48881

** Another way to grant the right to manage Windows 2000 services
http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=3896

** Server Operator Cannot Stop/Start Spooler Service
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-1573336.php
http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t54966.html

Hope this helps!
Farhan

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Olski

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axygen

ASKER

@Olski - thanks, I'll try that after hours.

@farhankazi - thanks for the links, the last one seems to be what I'm looking for. Will try that if @Olski's method doesn't work.

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axygen

ASKER

@Olski - it worked thanks!

In case anyone's wondering here's my batch script...

sc \\printserver stop spooler
ping -n 5 www.google.com
sc \\printserver start spooler

To test it out I actually set used, ping -n 30 www.google.com, and just monitored the print spooler service on printserver. I saw that it turned off and after about 30 pings (however long that takes) it started up again.

Olski

No worries, glad it sorted your problem.

lukefuno

how do you know if a schedule task did run successfully or not? is there a log file somewhere? thanks.

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Windows Server 2003

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Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).