Posted by Jordan Lindsey

Migrating print servers. Not the task every IT person wants. In a growing technological world, you need to support 32- and 64-bit Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, Mobile and Tablet. Being stuck on a Windows 2003 print server can hinder your productivity as a company and a department. Your server needs to be able to support your growing environment.

When migrating from a windows 2003 print server, you have a few obstacles to overcome. You need to bring over or setup the printer/printer queue’s, 32-bit drivers, add 64-bit drivers, printing defaults (i.e. duplexing, color, paper size), permissions, GPO’s, along with anything else you need on that new print server. The migrating can take place in a couple different ways, but I can tell you now, you are not going to like the driver process.

I don’t think there is a single person reading this blog that would disagree with me saying, driver setup and installation just never works quite right. Here’s what’s involved in the process:

• Get your 32-bit drivers installed on your new 64-bit server
• Download and add all of your 64-bit drivers
• Set up all of your printing defaults (for both 32- and 64-bit)
• Give out proper permissions
• Start adding printers (or start modifying your GPO and scripts to automatically modify everyone’s computer)
• All the while, hoping that it goes smoothly and you don’t get any support calls.

Currently, the most common method used when migrating print servers is to export then re-import the printers through the Print Management Console. The GUI will run the PrintBrm.exe, which can be found in C:WindowsSystem32spooltools. This is not a sure fix, as the “0x80070705 and 0x80070057 – driver not found”errors are very common during a Windows server migration process. I could go on for paragraphs about options, issues and scenarios for migrating your print server this way, but instead I’d like to introduce you to a far easier solution that solves the headaches mentioned above.

Here at PrinterLogic, our application was designed specifically to eliminate all of these headaches for you by enabling you to eliminate your print server (and the single point of failure it creates) altogether, while still maintaining full management capabilities of your entire print environment.

PrinterLogic provides an on-premise, web-based application that fully manages your entire direct IP from one single location, eliminating the single point of failure since everyone is direct IP. There are a ton of features included with PrinterLogic, but I am just going to mention those that are pertinent to the migration/import process.

After you have installed the PrinterLogic application (which only takes 5-10 minutes), you simply go into “Tools”, select “Import/Export” and then select “Import Microsoft printers into Printer Installer as Direct IP printers.” At this point you can browse out through Active Directory or specify the hostname of the print server(s). It will give you a drop down list of every printer/queue setup on the server, that you can then import/copy into Printer Installer by simply clicking on one printer or all of them, selecting a destination folder on the right (from Folder structure you create within Printer Installer) then hit a green arrow in the middle. It will then copy into Printer Installer your entire printer setup including, but not limited to, Printer name, location, comment information, IP, port, 32- and 64-bit drivers, and all the profile information and printing defaults (i.e., paper size, trays, color, duplexing, etc.).

Once imported in, you have two options:

1. You can then add your 64-bit drivers and profiles (if needed) and push everything out to a brand new server. You will have then migrated from an old to new server.
2. The other, more effective method is to keep everything in Printer Installer and use a server-less print environment. With Printer Installer you can manage, create, deploy and organize all of your printers, drivers, and who has access to them.

So, why migrate when you don’t need a single point of failure (a print server), when you can become server-less, all while enjoying the direct IP benefits and having centralized management for your entire corporation?

If you’d like to learn more, contact us here for a demo and a free trial.

Posted by Jordan Lindsey

Auditing and cost saving has been and will always be a top priority for any company, and auditing your print environment is an incredible way to manage cost. Do you want to know how much toner is being used company-wide, or by department? Or how much paper is being used? How about checking to see if duplexing is being used on all possible printers?

When it comes to printing, there are several different 3rd party applications (PrinterLogic, PaperCut, Cirrato, Xerox, HP, Print Audit, to name a few) that enable print tracking and delivery of audit reports.

Here at PrinterLogic, our application offers an all-inclusive print management suite, but for the purpose of this post I will focus on outlining our powerful print auditing capabilities.

PrinterLogic allows you to easily manage and sort a wide range of options for print auditing. As a result, you get a range of powerful reports, awesome graphs, pie charts, and summaries of:

• Printing by week or hour
• Application usage
• Job & page counts
• Simplex/duplex
• Color/B&W
• Paper size used

Each of these reports provides different graphical views which make it easy to send reports to separate departments or teams for billing or other auditing needs. From here you can see individual print tracking for both users and printers.

When viewing the auditing reports of an individual domain user you can collect and see the date, time, user name, job title, computer name, department name, printer name, document name, amount of pages, whether color or duplexing was used, and what paper size was used. You can sort by printers and find out which are your most heavily or lightest used, enabling you to replace overused printers or phase out unused printers.

And unlike many solutions on the market, PrinterLogic Web Stack (formerly Printer Installer) will also audit your USB printers. Did someone bring in a printer from home? Are departments buying their own local printers without notifying IT? If they print it, PrinterLogic Web Stack will audit it! So regardless of whether you’re dealing with network or USB printers, PrinterLogic’s solution will handle all of the auditing for you.

If you’d like a demo of how this works, as well as a look at how PrinterLogic provides an all-encompassing print management solution (with or without print servers), visit us at www.printerlogic.com.

Posted by Nick Ball

Printer drivers can become corrupt for many different reasons. The majority of the time this happens when they are initially not installed correctly, and the mistake is not noticed immediately. Regardless of how it happened, diagnosing what is wrong with the driver and getting it fixed can be a pain.

An easy way to “fix” corrupt drivers is to replace them. However, this is usually easier said than done. Depending on your print environment, this could mean going to each workstation that is using that driver and replacing it manually in the printer settings. Or if you have a print server (which can itself cause problems with drivers), replacing the driver is usually not an option because it could be used on many printers and workstations.

One method for easily handling printer driver issues is to use PrinterLogic Web Stack (formerly Printer Installer), which can help replace drivers quickly and easily. With PrinterLogic Web Stack you can select separate drivers for each operating system and architecture, which helps you select the right driver for any circumstance in the first place, thus preventing corrupted drivers in the first place. It can also easily replace drivers across all workstations with a single action.

PrinterLogic Web Stack can help prevent corrupt drivers by managing how the printers are installed on the end user’s workstation. In addition to simplifying your print server-based environment, PrinterLogic Web Stack can also use Direct IP printing, enabling you to eliminate print servers. This helps cut down on mass driver failure because each workstation has its own queue instead of sharing the one on the print server. If a driver on a print server becomes corrupt, anyone using that print queue can no longer print. But with PrinterLogic Web Stack, because each workstation has its own queue, if a single queue has a corrupt driver only that machine is affected.

For a quick demo of how PrinterLogic Web Stack can help you easily fix corrupt drivers, contact us here. We’d be happy to show you how it works, and get you started with a free trial.