Windows printer settings

[jred321]

quick question that i have no idea if anyone knows. in windows there is a "comments" field that describes each printer. does anyone know what populates this value? is it the driver or does it have to be set?

we are having an issue with some printers that the physical printer was upgraded but they are still behaving like the old printers, but the new printers still have the description of the old, so we are wondering if that is a clue that they were not upgraded correctly.

 

[genericuser]

quick question that i have no idea if anyone knows. in windows there is a "comments" field that describes each printer. does anyone know what populates this value? is it the driver or does it have to be set?

we are having an issue with some printers that the physical printer was upgraded but they are still behaving like the old printers, but the new printers still have the description of the old, so we are wondering if that is a clue that they were not upgraded correctly.

I know on the network here, if a printer has an IP identical to the old one, it takes on some of the attributes of the old one, especially the comments.

 

[jred321]

could it possibly keep the old drivers though and still function correctly unless you try to use one of the features of the new printer?

 

[goku4658]

at my job the comments is filled with just that comments....some of them read as the printer's IP or just notes about the printer

 

[jred321]

ours have descriptions of the printer in the comments, i.e. HP 4200N, HP 5, etc... Some of them are in fact HP 4200Ns but show up in the comments as HP 5, which is what the old printers are and they do not support what we are trying to do, and now the 4200Ns are acting like the old HP 5

 

[genericuser]

ours have descriptions of the printer in the comments, i.e. HP 4200N, HP 5, etc... Some of them are in fact HP 4200Ns but show up in the comments as HP 5, which is what the old printers are and they do not support what we are trying to do, and now the 4200Ns are acting like the old HP 5

define "acting as the old HP 5"

 

[jred321]

well i didn't want to get into that part of it because it's kind of difficult to explain. basically, there are 2 ways that the printer can interpret the print sent to it, one is PCL and one is Postscript. the older printers only supported PCL, but Postscript runs much much faster, so we changed the process to use Postscript instead. on the printers that do not support postscript, the code of the postscript script itself prints if you try to print something instead of the desired letter to print. this is how the old printers were acting, but we came up with a work around until they get new printers so no big deal. but then some offices have the new printers, the same exact ones we tested on here and is about 3 feet from me, and they are having the code of postscript print out. i am thinking that the printers were not installed correctly and were either running off the old drivers (as they are all HP printers, the old ones could still work on the new but you wouldn't notice until you tried to do a new thing), or off of generic drivers that do not support postscript

 

[genericuser]

right..

reinstall it on your print server and give it another name, make sure the correct driver is being used.

I had this problem with a couple of dell laser printers in the building.. they thought they were Laserjet 4L's for a while

 

[jred321]

reinstall it on your print server and give it another name, make sure the correct driver is being used.

you don't even want to know what i would have to do to get this done. one of the disadvantages of working at a large company. it's looking now like it was just a setting on the printer itself that was set wrong at the time of installation to only support the PCL profile and not the postscript. now the trick is to figure out which printers around the country have it set like that

 

[Dynotrick]

go to your printers folder and right click on the printer select properties and you should be able to edit the comments feild. works on all 5 printers i have installed here at work.

 

[jred321]

go to your printers folder and right click on the printer select properties and you should be able to edit the comments feild. works on all 5 printers i have installed here at work.

nope, i don't have permission to do that. i was more wondering how that field gets filled in if you don't edit it

 

[genericuser]

you don't even want to know what i would have to do to get this done. one of the disadvantages of working at a large company. it's looking now like it was just a setting on the printer itself that was set wrong at the time of installation to only support the PCL profile and not the postscript. now the trick is to figure out which printers around the country have it set like that

I suppose thats the benefit of working at a "small" shop.

I walk into the next room and there is my print server

 

[jred321]

hmm, we have ~50 field offices around the country, each with 10-25 printers, each office having its own print server. plus it's a whole other department's job to be in charge of them

 

[LRHK]

The comment field is filled in by the user who installs it on the server.... if you can't get onto the server I don't think you can edit the comment...

 

[jred321]

ok, so the comment has to be filled in by a user? it is not pre-filled ever?

 

[LRHK]

I set up 4 or 5 printers on my print server this year.. I tried doing from my desktop... would only work if I logged onto the to change anything. Not prefilled.

 

[LRHK]

The model is the only thing that is pre-filled.