I am running Windows Server 2008 (not R2) for a print server and I have a program that needs to write to the UNC path of the network printer. I have found that anyone in the Print Operators group is able to write to the UNC path of the network printer, but standard users are not. I have tried adding the same permissions as the Print Operators group to a user, but when I try to write to the UNC path, I get Access Denied. I cannot add users to the Print Operators group because it gives too many permissions. What permissions do I need to set to allow standard users to print to the UNC path of a network printer?
The user has to have write permissions to the spool directory (c:\windows\system32\spool\printers). Once the Users group was given write permissions, I was able to print to the UNC path of the network printer.