Windows 7 & Printer sharing on domain

[magicpud]

I have just upgraded the 8 pcs in my office from XP Pro to Win7 Pro 32bit and I’ve encountered printer sharing issues. I have a local mono laser connected to my PC by USB. I’ve shared this and others have been able to add the printer and on occasion print to it, it usually works when they want to print text to A4 but when they want to do labels or envelopes they usually sit in the queue and don’t print. This is not an issue we had on XP and the document templates haven’t changed. I don’t think it is an issue with the printer (I’ve replaced it with a new one to make sure), I don’t think it is an issue with the documents. I think it is an issue with Windows 7 and was wondering if there is a known issue or fix. The computers are connected over a domain not workgroup.

 

[brady]

I assume you don't have a print server function in the domain, so we'll go from there.

Is your printer simply shared or did it get an IP assigned to it? How did people access the printer, \\yourcomputername\printer? or IP? ip will change...

 

[magicpud]

Thanks for your reply. The printer is simply shared, it is connected to my pc via usb 2.0 connection and listed in the directory. People added the printer by selecting it from the list of shared printers rather than having to type in the printer and location manually.

 

[brady]

Does your printer host it's own drivers? Or are they pulling the driver(s) from a shared folder that you provide?

 

[magicpud]

I'm not sure, I haven't manually created a shared folder for the drivers. It's a plug and play printer.

 

[brady]

It could be a driver issue. People can always hit the \\yourcomputername\ right?

 

[magicpud]

All drivers are new, people can type in the printer location but there's no need. The printer is added to their network printers list and they can print to it most of the time, it's just buggy. If it is asked from another computer to print labels from a Word template they will usually print first time but not the second time, they just sit in the print queue with no errors until I delete them. If address labels or envelopes are printed with letters in Word, the letter will print out but a "cannot complete operation" message will appear on their computer when they try to print envelopes or labels, again the item will sit in the queue with no error. They save them to a shared folder and I print them off fine. We all have the same config on our PCs.

This did not happen with XP Pro

It is happening on Win7 with two different printers. First was Canon Pixma MP470 printer, now replaced with HP P1102 Laserjet.

 

[brady]

Can the windows 7 machines print test pages successfully (all the time)?