Friday, July 31, 2009

changing the location of the spool folder

the spool folder is used by the windows 2003 print spooler service as a temporary storage are for print jobs waiting to be sent to a print device. the default location for the spool folder is
systemroot\system32\spool\printers.

configuring printer permissions

printer permissions are specially allowed or denied to individual users and groups. by default, the print permissions is allowed to the everyone group. user and group printer permission are additive, and typically the least restrictive combination of printer permissions applies.

an exception oto this rule occurs when a user or group is specifically denied a printer permission. if a user is denied a printer permission, or any group the user is a member of is denied printer permission, then the suer is denied that printer permission. a denied permission always overrides a corresponding allowed permission.

printer permissions are set on a printer-by-printer basis. these permissions apply both when the printer is accessed over the network and when the printer is accessed from the local computer.

printer permissions, descriptions and functionality

print - a user with this permission can connect to the printer and send print jobs to the printer. by default the print permissions is assigned to the everyone group.

manage document - a user with this permission can pause, resume, restart and delete print jobs sent to the printer, by default members of the creator owner group are assigned the management documents printer permissions. this enables users who create print jobs to manage their own print jobs.

manage printers - a user with this permission can perform all tasks included in the print permissions. in addition, the user can pause, restart, and share the printer, can change spooler settings, can assign printer permissions (including the manage documents permission) and can change the printer's properties.

setting printer priorities

another technique you can use to help manage the flow of print jobs on your windows 2003 network is setting printer priorities. when more than one printer sends print jobs to the same print device , setting printer priorities may be useful.

if two printers are configured to use the same print device, and you configure one of these printers to have a higher priority than the other printer.then all print jobs from the higher priority printer will be sent to the print device before any print jobs from the lower priority printer are sent.

the highest printer priority is 99, and the lowest printer priority is 1. all printers have a priority of 1 by default.

scheduling printers

scheduling printers is a technique you can use to help manage the flow of print jobs on your windows 2003 network. scheduling a printer means assigning the hours a specific print device available for use by a specific printer.

when scheduling a printer the hours of availability apply only to the print device, not to the printer. this means that users can print to the printer at any time during the day. and the printer then spools the jobs to the hard disk. however the print jobs are sent to the print device only during the print device's hours of availability.

so why should you want to schedule a printer? well, suppose that you are the administrator for a small network that has 20 windows computers. the owner of the company recently brought a laser print device for network printing, and doesn't want to spend any more money on print devices. one of the employees occasionally generates a print jobs that is 500 to 600 pages long. this report ties up the one available print device for a long time, frustrating other employees. the large reports are for archival and reference purposes, and are not needed immediately.

you solve the problem by scheduling printers. first you create second printer that prints to the laser print device.the you schedule the new printer so that it only sends print jobs to the print devices during non business hours. you instruct the employee who creates the large print jobs to use the new printer for large print jobs. the result is that the employee can generates large print jobs at any time without inconveniencing other employees. the large print jobs are spooled to the hard disk, and then sent to the print device during non business hours.

configuring printer pools

when a printer has a multiple ports (and multiple print devices) assigned to it, this is called a printer pool. users print to a single printer, and the printer load balances its print jobs between the print devices assigned to it.

a printer pool is a useful tool when both of the following criteria met
  • all print devices assigned to the printer use the same print device driver. (usually this means that identical print devices are used)
  • all print devices assigned to the printer pool are located physically close to each other.

managing printing

printing terminology

printer

a printer is the software interface between the windows 2003 operating system and the device that produces the printed output.windows 2003 calls a printer as a combination of a print queue (or print spooler) plus a driver for the device that produces printed output.

print device

in windows 2003 the term print device (or printing device) refers to the physical device that produces printed output - what is more commenly referred to as a " printer "

auditing and connecting to printers

there are two types of printers you can add
  • local printers
  • network printers
adding a printer on a remote computer
  • start windows explorer (select start - programms - accessories - windows - explorer)
  • in the left pane, click the + next to my network places. click the + next to entire network. click the + next to microsoft windows network. click the + next to the domain or workgroup that contains the computer on which you want to add a printer. click the + next tothe computer on which you want to add a printer.highlight the printers folder.
  • the contents of the printers folder on the remote computer appear in the right pane. to start the add printer wizard on the remote computer, double click add printer. follow the instruction presented earlier in this chapter to add a printer.
connecting to internet printers

an internet printer is a printer that is published (made available) on a web server for the purpose of making the printer available to client computers on the internet, client computers on your company's intranet or both.

you can access internet printers on a windows 2003 computer at http://server_name /printers

Friday, July 24, 2009

how to repair boot sector in xp

If your pc wont be able to boot from xp there might be a damaged boot sector or a missing or corrupt ntldr or ntdetect.com files, to repair these items follow these steps.

To repair a damaged Boot Sector
  • go to the recovery console
  • type following command and press enter
  • fixboot
  • press Y and proceed
Note - the boot sector is written to the partition that's currently labeled as the C: drive

To replace damaged ntldr and ntdetect.com

To replace damaged ntldr and ntdetect.com you can copy fresh files from the XP CD using the COPY command. Boot with the XP CD and enter the Recovery Console.At the Command Prompt type the following (where "X" is your CD-Rom drive letter) allowing the files to overwrite the old files.
  • COPY X:\i386\NTLDR C:
  • COPY X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:

how to format using recovery console

there is some commands you should know before format, these are

format for initialised format command
/q for quick format
/fs specify file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS)

So before using command select format drive, select quick format or full format, and file system.

For example if you put FORMAT C: /Q /FS:NTFS will quick formats C partition as NTFS

If you put FORMAT C: /FS:FAT32 will full format of C as FAT32

Note - If a file system is not specified, then the existing file system format is retained.

how to repair master boot record (MBR) in xp

a problem with the master boot record in a system may prevent the system from booting.MBR can be corrupted in several ways, it can corrupted by malicious code, by disk errors, or be overwritten by other boot loaders.but you can easily repair MBR using recovery console.go to the recovery console by either following ways from windows xp installation disk or Windows XP Recovery Console at startup (first have to install) for this example we get start from windows installation cd,
  • Start your pc in with CD-ROM support and windows installation cd on it.
  • When prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.
  • If you repairing multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.
  • Enter the administrator password if prompted
  • To fix the MBR, use the following command
  • fixmbr
  • Type y and ENTER to fix the MBR
  • Type exit and press enter to leave the recovery console and reboot system.

for additional info
to install recovery console in windows xp read this post

Monday, July 20, 2009

disable " compress old files " option in windows xp

have trouble when every time you clean-up your hard disk, wasting more time with compressing old files? want to know how to disable compressing old files, here's how

  • go to registry editor (click start- run- type regedit - press enter)
  • navigate to the following registry key
  • H_K_L_M \ \SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \Explorer\ VolumeCaches \ CompressOldFiles

  • delete the complete key of CompressOldFiles
  • exit the registry and run disk cleanup again
  • you will see that there is no more compressing old files, your problem is fixed.

also you can disable office setup files from the disk cleanup

just go to the registry key of

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Office Setup Files


and delete the key office setup files, that's it.