Managing Local and Network Print Devices

You manage print devices in Windows XP Professional from the Printers And
Faxes folder, which is accessible from the Control Panel, or by clicking Start|Printers
And Faxes. When working with printing in Windows XP, you need to fully understand
the following printing terminology as defined by Microsoft:
➤ Printer—A software interface between the operating system and a print device.
It defines ports through which print jobs get routed. Printer names direct
print jobs to one or more print devices.
➤ Print device—A piece of equipment (hardware) that physically produces printed
documents. A print device may be attached to a local computer or connected
via a network interface.
➤ Printer port—A software interface through which print jobs get directed to
either a locally attached print device, or a network-connected print device.
Windows XP supports local line printer terminal (LPT), COM (serial), and
Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. It also supports network-connected printer
port devices such as the Intel NetPort and the Hewlett-Packard (HP) JetDirect.
➤ Print server—A computer that serves as the host for printers that are associated
with print devices.
➤ Printer driver—Software specific to each print device (designed to run in
Windows XP) that translates printing commands into printer language codes
for each print device. PCL5 and PostScript are examples of two types of printer
languages.
➤ Print job—The actual document to be printed along with the necessary print
processing command.
➤ Print resolution—What determines the quality and smoothness of the text or
images that the print device will render. This specification is expressed in dots
per inch (dpi). Higher dpi numbers generally result in better print quality.
➤ Print spooler—The process (service) that runs in the background of Windows
XP that initiates, processes, and distributes print jobs. The spooler saves print
jobs into a temporary physical file on disk. Print jobs are then despooled and
transferred to the appropriate print device.
➤ Print queue—A logical “waiting area” where print jobs are temporarily stored
until the print device is available and ready to process each job according to
the job’s priority level, and according to its order within the queue.

Troubleshooting Internet Information Services

Troubleshooting Internet Information Services
If users are experiencing problems connecting to the default Web site, to the
default FTP site, or to a new virtual directory that you have created, you can
follow the steps listed in the next few sections to attempt to rectify the problem(s).
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Internet Web Site
To isolate problems that may be preventing users from connecting to the Internet
Web site:
➤ Check that the Web server contains HTML files in the drive_letter:\inetpub\
wwwroot folder.
➤ Attempt to connect to the Web server’s home directory using a browser on a
computer that has a live connection to the Internet. Your Web site must have a
public IP address that is registered with the InterNIC, and that public IP address
must be registered with the Internet’s DNS servers. For example, if your registered
domain name is QuePublishing.com and you want to view a virtual directory
on that Web site named “aboutus”, you would type “www.
QuePublishing.com/aboutus” in the Address line of your Web browser. The Web
page that you requested should appear within your Web browser’s window.
Intranet Web Site
To isolate problems that may be preventing users from connecting to an intranet
Web site:
➤ Check that the Web server and the client computers have active network
connections.
➤ Verify that a Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) and/or DNS server
is available and functioning on your network for computer name to IP address
name resolution.
➤ Go to a client computer, launch a Web browser, and type in a valid URL for
the Web server computer. Intranet URLs can take the format of http://
computer_name/home_page_name.htm or http://computer_name/
virtual_directory_alias_name. Examples of this syntax are http://computer1/
myhomepage.htm and http://computer1/myvirtualdirectory.

Web Folders and the WebDAV Protocol

You can share folders with other computers by making them available as Web

Folders instead of, or in addition to, sharing them as network shared folders. To

share a folder on a Windows XP Professional system as a Web Folder, right-click

the folder, select Properties, and click the Web Sharing tab. Click the Add button

to assign an Alias name for the Web Folder, specify the permissions for the Web

Folder, and click OK to create the Web Folder on the default Web site. The

WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol acts as a

redirector that enables users to open and save documents via Hypertext Transport

Protocol (HTTP) port 80. As long as the Web server host computer is

running IIS 5 or above, and as long as an application program supports saving

and retrieving documents via HTTP, you can take advantage of WebDAV. To

use WebDAV, simply type in the URL path plus the document name in the

Open or Save As dialog box for an application.

Users can encrypt files stored in Web Folders without fear of compromising the

data whenever the files are transmitted across the network wire. Encrypted files

are always encrypted and decrypted on the local computer before being sent over

the network. Encrypted files are transferred in cybertext over the network—even

if encrypted files get intercepted as they are sent over a network connection, the

encrypted files cannot be interpreted.

Managing Printers and Print Jobs

From the Printers And Faxes folder, you manage print jobs by double-clicking the printer icon that you want to work with. After you have opened the printer’s print queue window, you can pause printing or cancel all documents from the Printer menu. You can also take the printer offline from the Printer menu. If you select an individual print job that is listed, you can Pause, Resume, Start, or Cancel that job by selecting one of these options from the Documents menu. The print queue window itself displays the document name, the status, the document owner, the number of pages for each print job, the size of the job, the time and date that the job was submitted, and the port used. Members of the Administrators group and members of the Power Users group have permissions to manage print jobs that are listed in the print queue. At the time that users print one or more documents, they get the built-in security principal Creator Owner applied to their user accounts so that they are granted permission to manage documents as well. Users may manage only their own print jobs,

unless they are members of the Administrators group or the Power Users group (if the computer is standalone or a member of a workgroup), or members of the Print Operators group or the Server Operators group (if the Windows XP print server is a member of a Windows domain). Users can also manage other users’ print jobs if they have been granted the Allow Manage Documents permission.