samba - Aug 2004 - Point 'n' Print, issues after upgrade to 3.0.6

I've upgraded successfully to 3.0.6 finally.  As part of that upgrade, I 
configured the print$ share and installed the printer drivers into it.  I've
been using the Laserjet 4 Plus driver with great success.  However, when I 
configured the printer to use this driver stored on the server, everything 
printed fine except for Excel documents!  Excel gives the error in "print 
preview" that the margin size does not fit on the page.  Only for Excel!

So I installed the 4300 PS driver onto the server.  It works for all programs.  
However, it's dog slow!  It prints a page, waits, prints a page, waits.  
Takes over twice as long to print.

Needless to say, my users don't like it.  Can anyone give me ideas about why
the 4P driver is not working with Excel?  Anyone with similar experiences?  
I'm not sure whether to blame it on the upgrade, the fact that the drivers 
are now stored on the server, or some other factor.

Oh yeah, another strange problem.  The Windows print job monitor thing that 
comes up when you double-click a printer, no longer automatically refreshes 
now that I have the drivers on the server.  This one isn't terribly 
important, but just odd.  You have to manually refresh it.

Thanks in advance,
Misty

Once again, I have fixed my own problem.  Here is a word of advice for those 
who want to use the APW from a Windows machine to install printers to your 
server.

Use the newest version of Windows that will be used on your network, to add 
the drivers.  It seems very obvious now, but I had no idea that the NT 
drivers would not work with XP.  My whole trouble is because I used the APW 
on an NT box to intall the drivers.  It happily installed the NT and W9x 
drivers.  Then the W2K and XP machines happily tried to use the NT drivers 
but it did not work!  I was adding drivers like crazy and finally corrupted 
my drivers and had to start over.

Another word to the wise -- in XP (and possibly W2K) they think of THEMSELVES 
as printer servers too.  When you are adding drivers, make sure you are 
adding them through Network Neighborhood / Samba server / Printers share / 
Printer.  Otherwise it will just add them to the XP box and not to the Samba 
server, and this will cause you endless grief.  Same thing if you need to 
delete drivers -- you can delete them from the client till you are blue in 
the face, but they won't delete from the server.  Click on a printer, click 
File / Server Properties, then click the Drivers tab.  Here you can add and 
delete drivers easily.

I hope this helps.

Misty

On Thursday 26 August 2004 10:16, Misty Stanley-Jones
wrote:
> I've upgraded successfully to 3.0.6 finally.  As part of that upgrade,
I
> configured the print$ share and installed the printer drivers into it. 
> I've been using the Laserjet 4 Plus driver with great success. 
However,
> when I configured the printer to use this driver stored on the server,
> everything printed fine except for Excel documents!  Excel gives the error
> in "print preview" that the margin size does not fit on the page.
Only for
> Excel!
>
> So I installed the 4300 PS driver onto the server.  It works for all
> programs. However, it's dog slow!  It prints a page, waits, prints a
page,
> waits. Takes over twice as long to print.
>
> Needless to say, my users don't like it.  Can anyone give me ideas
about
> why the 4P driver is not working with Excel?  Anyone with similar
> experiences? I'm not sure whether to blame it on the upgrade, the fact
that
> the drivers are now stored on the server, or some other factor.
>
> Oh yeah, another strange problem.  The Windows print job monitor thing that
> comes up when you double-click a printer, no longer automatically refreshes
> now that I have the drivers on the server.  This one isn't terribly
> important, but just odd.  You have to manually refresh it.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Misty