Workshop

• Problems with printing
• Problems with files
• Problems with applications
I Can’t Print!
If you surveyed the entire country and asked administrators which network problem they found most
aggravating, my bet is that one of the top answers would be network print problems. Therefore, we as
troubleshooters want to fix those problems, pronto.
Unfortunately, many delayed resolutions to printer problems are due to insufficient printer documentation.
When Cassie and friends refer to the broken printer as “Cassie’s printer,” that means something to them,
but to you as a network troubleshooter, it means zero (unless it’s followed by “Oh yeah, that’s the finance-
10 printer on the PENELOPE server”).
Having a table of departments and printers works sometimes, but I find it more convenient when the
printer installer slaps a label on it with server/directory/queue name information. That way, you can ask
the user, particularly at a remote location, “What’s the printer label say?” and be able to immediately start
looking in the right place.
Let’s take a look at what network printing usually entails. You connect to a network printer queue by
browsing servers or the directory services tree, and you install drivers appropriate to that printer. So far,
this is just like installing a printer that lives on your PC’s LPT1 port, right? The only difference is that
you’re specifying some spooky network location rather than a local port.
What happens when you try to print? To answer that, let’s run through these steps:
1. Your application generates a print metafile that it sends to the print driver. Metafile is a
Microsoft term for a common ground graphics file that both applications and printer drivers know
how to read. The print driver can then process the file.
2. The print driver processes the metafile and ends up with a printer-specific spool file. A spool
file is where a print job is kept until it’s printed by the printer. What’s a “spool”? Think of a spool
of thread, all of which will eventually get used, with the thread nearest to the top getting used
first.
3. The spooler (the program on your computer that deals with spool files) works with the file and
print client to transmit the spool file to the appropriate server’s printer queue.
4. The server places the spool file in the appropriate holding directory if the printer is busy. Each
spool file is treated on a “first come, first serve” basis.
5. The spool file is transmitted to the physical printer (or a network print server) when the printer
is free (after other jobs have printed).