Re: [U2] How do you verify windows printer is good before fatal error by PRINTing to a bogus printer.

Thanks, Brian.
I was heading that general direction with
    net view \\[printserver]
Then searching for the printer I'm looking for.

You're right about the drivers,  but I don't think I'll get a fatal 
error just because the printing is garbled or printer is offline, will I?

We've been getting a rash of errors in something that's been pretty 
stable for years, resulting in incomplete updates because the PRINT 
statements aborted were in the middle of the writes.



On 1/30/2014 4:23 PM, Brian Leach wrote:
> Not quite so easy -
>
> Remember that under Windows a printer is a combination of a driver and a
> device.
>
> If you link to a remote printer, it needs to install the driver locally on
> your server so as to access the printer correctly .. that means either it
> has to be a model that has previously been installed (say, if you have two
> equivalent HP Lasers on different machines) or the client needs to have the
> right drivers to publish back to you - which can give problems if they are
> running different versions of Windows and e.g. 64 bit vs 32 bit and you
> haven't loaded them all.
>
> Also, BTW, being able to access the driver doesn't mean the printer is
> working. Most drivers only check when they actually start printing. So any
> 'is this printer online or offline' messages only relate to the last thing
> the driver knew about and not necessarily the current state.
>
> That said, you can try the DOS NET commands. NET USE will show you what you
> have visible already:
>
> C:\Users\brian>net use
> New connections will be remembered.
>
>
> Status       Local     Remote                    Network
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> Unavailable  LPT1:     \\tiny\text1              Microsoft Windows Network
> The command completed successfully.
>
> Now this is NOT showing what is actually available.
>
> C:\Users\brian>NET USE "\\tiny\HP Color LaserJet CP2020 Series PCL6"
> The command completed successfully.
>
> Now it is there:
>
> Status       Local     Remote                    Network
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> Unavailable  LPT1:     \\tiny\text1              Microsoft Windows Network
> OK                     \\tiny\HP Color LaserJet CP2020 Series PCL6
>                                                  Microsoft Windows Network
> The command completed successfully.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
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