Questions[printing](server)

I have external contractors sitting in my office that have access to various file shares via Citrix (they are not on our internal network).

These contractors require printing.

Is there a way to enable printing to a network printer from a program not in Citrix (having them print in Citrix is not an option currently, due to them needing to print from specific programs not in Citirx)?

Or do I just have to use something like papercut's webprint (not as nice as they can't just print directly to a printer)?

Almost every time I've had to change the print processor for a printer, it's because it's set to something other than WINPRINT/RAW. Granted, fax software sometimes makes use of other print processors, but most of the time it seems as though the WINPRINT/RAW processor is the best way to go. Can anyone shed some light on the history and need for different print processors? For instance, when different processors are needed and what types of symptoms can be seen if the wrong processor is being used?

My local CUPS server is confused about the name of the printer I use. It has two names: hpext and hpext@vm-cups. I can never predict which one is going to work, and if I use the wrong one, jobs just sit in its queue indefinitely.

There are no printers listed in /etc/cupsd/cupsd.conf; instead I have the line

BrowsePoll cups.eecs.tufts.edu

This server lists only hpext and not hpext@vm-cups.
I'm thinking that somehow my local server is confused, and if I can delete the printer from its memory, all will be well. But nowhere in the documentation can I find a command to delete a printer, and the DELETE PRINTER button on the stupid web interface has no effect.

What can I do?

We recently migrated to a Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Server (SP2) as a print server. For the most part, we found that it wasn't too hard to get both a x64 and a x86 driver for the printers we were using. Shortly after switching, we noticed that certain printers were taking far, far longer to spool their jobs. In particular, we noticed that our HP LaserJet 8100 was taking approximately 10-20 seconds to spool a job compared to its previous behavior of spooling almost faster than you could click.

At first we suspected it might have something to do with the x64 version of Windows managing the x86 client print requests. However, the behavior only seemed to manifest on certain printers. We eventually narrowed it down to the HP Universal Print Driver. Any printer using that driver was extremely slow spooling. HP doesn't offer a printer specific W2K3 64-bit driver for our LaserJet 8100, only the universal driver is available (as of 2/25/09). They do offer an 8100 specific driver for 32-bit systems in addition to the Universal driver.

Unfortunately, the 32-bit specific drivers cannot be added to the x64 printer share because of the difference in print name. Apparently you're only able to add 32-bit drivers if they are named exactly the same thing (i.e. they must both be Universal Printer drivers). This has created quite a dilemma. The performance is so poor with the universal print drivers, it makes multi-print jobs take many times longer than they did before. Doing a stack of prints for our Engineering team literally takes hours where before it took a half hour.

It seems our options are limited. If we return to an x86 Windows Install to support the 8100 specific drivers, we lose the ability to support x64 systems. It would be a waste of money and resources to create both 32-bit and 64-bit print servers. It would be a lot nicer to eliminate the Universal print drivers or find a way to improve their performance.

Is there a solution to improving the Universal Print Driver performance or am I stuck going back to a x86 print server?

I have two Ricoh printers/copiers setup for IP printing in the office.
Before this week there were no problems printing to them.
Now a handful of them (All running Vista, not sure if it is every Vista computer or not, It seems like I would hear more from users if that was the case), see both printers as being offline. All the PC's running XP have no problems printing. When this first occurred a reboot was able to get the printer to appear online, but that is no longer the case. (and at the time I thought only one computer was having the issue) I have removed the printers, reinstalled the latest drivers and there is no change on the Vista machines. I am currently using the same version of a RPCS driver on both VISTA and XP. As a work around I could setup the printers on a 2003 Server, but I don't see why IP printing should just stop working out of the blue like this. The printer can be reached by IP from all computers and the web interface is accessible and reports no errors.
Does anyone have any ideas?