How do I troubleshoot Windows 2000 printing problems?

Cannot Print to a Network Printer After Adding ICS. After you add Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to the network, you are unable to print. This occurs because ICS uses a Class C subnet with an address range of 198.168.0.x. To fix this issue, reset the IP address of the printer to match the subnet of the computers that are using ICS.

Your Printer Uncovered

When feeling the frustrations of dealing with an inaccessible network and experiencing the agony that often arises when you've sent an angry email to a coworker prematurely, it's quite common to wish you could return to the days of a wholly paper-based office, one without a network whose data you can't access when it's crashed and without an email program that sends irretrievable angry memos. Yet for the vast majority of the time, computers have changed the way we work for the better. Information can now be shared with incredible ease and flexibility, and much more quickly since documents can be sent, managed and stored electronically. However, though great advances have been made toward a paperless office, it isn't yet upon us, and it may never be fully realized. People like paper documents, especially when they can be helpful, as in the examples listed above, and paper documents are still a necessary element in a successful business environment..

Managing Network Printing in a Windows Environment

Point and Print reduces administrative overhead, and simplifies and automates printing . Point and Print functionality was introduced in Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 98 Second Edition (as a client), and Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 and later. When you connect to a printer on a print server, the connecting client looks for the appropriate drivers on the print server. If the drivers are installed on the server, the drivers are automatically downloaded and configured for the client. However, if the drivers are not present, you are prompted to select and install the drivers...

Spooling EMF Files

The following illustration shows the sequence of calls that start with an application initiating an EMF spooling request by calling GDI (labeled step 1 in the illustration) and the local print provider writing a print job description file to the disk and calling spooler process with an EndPage or EndDoc function call which signals the availability of an EMF file to despool (these two steps are labeled 8 and 9 in the illustration)...

Typical Printing Process Scenario Using a Raw Spool File

This section illustrates the major relationships between the spooler components during the printing process by walking through the sequence of calls between components during the spooling of a raw format spool file and subsequent playback (despooling) of the file to a bidirectional printer. The following illustration shows the sequence of calls that start with an application initiating a print request by calling GDI (labeled step 1 in the illustration) and end with the local print provider writing a spool file to the disk (step 8) and starting a background thread that will eventually initiate the despooling process (step 9). The sequence of steps in the despooling process are shown in a separate illustration...

Printing Pages with Blue Background

We have some pages that users may have a problem printing. These are the pages with white and yellow text on a blue background. They can be printed by changing the color options in the browser...

Printing Problem Windows Help Links

Windows Troubleshooting, C omputer Help Technical Support, Fast Windows Help, 24 Hour Computer Support, California Computer Repair, Canon Support, Compaq Support, Computer Troubleshooting...

Printing Problems & Solutions

Unfortunately, the printing capabilities of both Netscape and Internet Explorer are rather simple-minded, probably indicating that printing is not considered a high-priority feature. In most cases everything will work just fine, however you may occasionally find yourself in a situation in which the printed output does not suite your needs. The most common example of this is printing a page with white text...

Printing Problems

Printing problems where things are coming out filled in black:
Go into the Properties area of the Print Graphics dialog and change from Vector to Rastor graphics. This should fix the problem...

Slow/Delayed printing from Windows 2000/XP

With Windows 2000 and Windows XP, all MS-DOS printing is done through the Windows NT spooler system. In order to know when to send a job to the spooler, there is a time-out on the printer port. Once something has been printed to the port, if this time out passes with no more data presented to the port, the print job is sent to the spooler. The default time out is 15 seconds. Therefore, there will be a 15 second delay before the print job starts printing...

Tips on Printing in Windows 95/98

If you have good eyesight and want to save trees, you can print four pages to one page from any application under Windows 95. Here's how...

Tips on Printing in Windows NT

You can change the default printer spool directory for all printers or the printer spool directory for specific printers. To change the default printer spool directory for all printers add the following value..

Top 10 HP printing problems and how to fix them

While Hewlett-Packard printers are known for their reliability, they still need a helping hand from time to time. From the ubiquitous paper jam to the vexing 50.4 error, this article offers a top 10 list you can use to troubleshoot any HP printer...

Word shows only one or two fonts in its Font list

A lot of printers (inkjets in particular) are unable to print closer than .67 inches or so from the bottom edge of the paper...

About Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring is the process of capturing and analyzing performance data from various components of your server environment (including applications, memory, CPU, hardware, and your network) to locate bottlenecks. A bottleneck can be caused by processes backing up because the server does not have enough processor cycles to efficiently complete a request, poorly designed code in a custom application, or a multitude of problems related to the network and hardware...

Locating Performance Bottlenecks

Once you have brought your Dynamo system up to maximum throughput, you can look at the components of the system to determine which components are limiting factors in performance...

Free Website Monitoring

These are free services which will monitor your URL (or other Internet devices such as email servers) for downtime, and notify you via email and/or pager.  Many are only free for a trial period, but some offer service for an unspecified length of time...

Situational Awareness of Systems Fortifies Reliable Communications

Network monitoring tools, long the purview of the U.S. Defense Department logistics community, now are moving to the warfighting environment to support future military operations. The technology continuously examines the health of networks, then reports this information to a central location. It also can prevent system slowdowns by predicting problems and offering solutions...

Live Testing Prevents Critical Failures

Network outages and slowdowns seriously impact productivity, costing service providers and enterprises millions of dollars annually. The effect is apparent with network outages, but the cost of a network slowdown, or sluggish data transmission, is more difficult to measure. Until recently, detecting the cause of disruptions and slow traffic has been a time-consuming and costly trial-and-error process...

Ten Tips for Domino Administrators

Run Domino as a service. When installing Domino on Windows NT or Windows 2000, you should run the Domino server as a service. This ensures that the Domino server always starts up correctly when the server is restarted, and also prevents the problems caused when a logged-on user at the server starts the Domino server. In that case, if that user is logged off at the server, then the Domino server processes are automatically killed...

Performance Monitoring

Windows 2000 can be told how to adjust the priorities for multitasking purposes, such as user requests vs. background services. This can be a powerful tool for speeding up your server, but can also turn heavily against you if nost handled correctly. In this series, MCSE Brien M. Posey tells you how to tweak these priorities, identifies the issues, and shows how to handle them. Source: EarthWeb (April 5, 2001)
Description of Performance Options in Windows 2000
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: 259025 - This article describes the performance options in Windows 2000. To view or modify these options, click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, double-click System, click the Advanced tab, and then click Performance Options...

Apache Maintenance Basics

Monitoring Apache, Log Monitoring, Log Management, Configuration Management, Security and Passwords, Keeping Apache Up to Date, Other Systems and Extensions, Scheduling Maintenance...

Windows Server 2003 Server and Macintosh

To give you the short and easy answer, there is none. The only changes made to SFM for all Whistler releases (now called XP and 2003) were bug fixes (mostly minor ones at that) and taking out Print Services for Macintosh from XP. There may have been a few slightly large bugs fixed, but as I recall, there were very few blue screen show-stopper bugs in SFM to begin with, so the developer focused on other tasks he had...

Windows Server 2003 Security Guide

There are numerous steps that system administrators can take to protect their servers from attack. The increase in the number and severity of hacking attempts in recent years has lead to the forming of many organizations that offer consultation on issues of computer security. Many of these organizations freely offer lists of recommended "best practices" to counter the hacker problem. We have examined many of these documents and based on the most current data available, we have compiled our own set of recommendations. Most of the attacks that we have experienced on campus would have been prevented or at least minimized had the recommendations below been in place...

A few Windows server security settings

Following are some very important security settings to minimize attacks and keep any outside hacker from poking into your server.. .

New Tools Strengthen Windows Server Security

Even as Microsoft attacks viruses, worms, and security on several fronts, two ISVs provide new management tools that allow admins to limit access, privileges, and permissions to Windows Server files, folders and resources...

OS Security Pointers

This next section is dedicated to providing an overview of how to secure a Windows or Linux OS. This will only be a rough sketch of what procedures and steps you should perform. For more in-depth and comprehensive information, consult the articles and books listed in the reference section...

Securing Microsoft Windows NT Installation

Microsoft® Windows NT® operating system provides a rich set of security features. However, the default out-of-the-box configuration is highly relaxed, especially on the Workstation product. This is because the operating system is sold as a shrink-wrapped product with an assumption that an average customer may not want to worry about a highly restrained but secure system on their desktop. This assumption has changed over the years as Windows NT gains popularity largely because of its security features. Microsoft is investigating a more secure default configuration for future releases. In the meantime, this article talks about various security issues with respect to configuring all Windows NT version 4.0 operating system products for a highly secure computing environment...

6 Tips To Secure Your Website

Most people on the internet are good, honest people. However, there are some people browsing the internet who derive fun from poking around websites and finding security holes. A few simple tips can help you secure your website in the basic ways. Now, obviously, the subject of data security is a complicated one and way beyond the scope of this column. However, I will address the very basics one should do which will alleviate many potential problems that might allow people to see things they shouldn't.

What is SMS?

The Short Message Service (SMS) is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The text can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created as part of the GSM Phase 1 standard. The first short message is believed to have been sent in December 1992 from a Personal Computer (PC) to a mobile phone on the Vodafone GSM network in the UK. Each short message is up to 160 characters is length when Latin alphabets are used, and 70 characters in length when non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic and Chinese are used.

SMS (Short Message Service)

A system for sending short (256 bytes or less) text messages between wireless devices. GSM and narrowband TDMA support message lengths of 160 characters. GSM supports two-way messaging, while TDMA enables messages to be received from the network only. CDMA supports messages of 256 bytes and two-way messaging.

Short Message Service: What, How and Where?

Short message service is a mechanism of delivery of short messages over the mobile networks. It is a store and forward way of transmitting messages to and from mobiles. The message (text only) from the sending mobile is stored in a central short message center (SMS) which then forwards it to the destination mobile. This means that in the case that the recipient is not available, the short message is stored and can be sent later. Each short message can be no longer than 160 characters.

SMS information

Text messaging has become immensely popular, especially where you bear in mind that the Network Operators never expected it to be a hit - in fact is was 'launched' by accident. Mobile Phone Network Operators used a spare data channel to send each other messages, and it caught on. Improvements to the service, such as T9 predictive text (to help type faster), have helped to improve the service, and newer enhancements such as enhanced messaging (EMS) led to multimedia messaging (MMS, with video, photos and sound).

Free SMS Services

The Short Message Service (SMS) is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The text can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. SMS was created when it was incorporated into the Global System for Mobiles (GSM) digital mobile phone standard. Free SMS services are by far the cheapest way to send small numbers of SMS messages.

EMail To SMS Gateways

Free Email to SMS Gateways

Top 10 Security Modifications in Windows XP Service Pack 2

Windows XP Professional and Home will soon be introduced to Service Pack 2, which is really nothing more than security updates and new security features. Here are the top 10 security features and modifications that you can expect after the installation.

A firewall in an IT system

The term “firewall” evokes the image of a solid wall in a building, which prevents a fire spreading from one part of the building to another. Sometimes it is understood as a “wall of fire” blocking the entrance.

Hidden Threat: Alternate Data Streams

A relatively unknown compatibility feature of NTFS, Alternate Data Streams (ADS) provides hackers with a method of hiding root kits or hacker tools on a breached system and allows them to be executed without being detected by the systems administrator.

What causes the buffer overflow condition? Broadly speaking, buffer overflow occurs anytime the program writes more information into the buffer than the space it has allocated in the memory. This allows an attacker to overwrite data that controls the program execution path and hijack the control of the program to execute the attacker's code instead the process code. For those who are curious to see how this works, we will now attempt to examine in more detail the mechanism of this attack and also to outline certain preventive measures.

Apache Week is constantly monitoring Apache community news and alerts for issues that affect users of the Apache web server

You will need to Audit your systems for enhanced and increased security. When Microsoft laid out this objective, they were most likely thinking about building your security strategy up with Defense in Depth. This strategy is outlined as a way to avoid depending on one single protective measure deployed on your network. In other words, to eliminate the feeling of being secured because you implemented a firewall on your Internet connection you should implement other security measures like an IDS (Intrusion Detection) system, Auditing and Biometrics for Access Control.

Active Directory is one of the most important areas of Windows that should be monitored for intrusion prevention and the auditing required by legislation like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley. I say that because Active Directory is home to objects most associated with user access: user accounts, groups, organizational units and group policy objects. This article deals with monitoring users and groups using the Windows Security Log.

In spite of the fact that there's no such thing as a secure network, there are still a lot of things you can do that doesn't require you to take a second mortgage on your home and thousands of man-hours. This is especially true when it comes to providing secure access to Microsoft IIS Web servers.

In this article, we'll take a look at some of the factors you should consider when buying a firewall, features available on some of the most popular offerings, and how to compare the real cost of each (hint: the initial purchase price is only a starting point).

In this article we will learn how to configure a connection to a virtual private network (VPN) using Windows XP. This article will show you how to create a new VPN connection using Microsoft Windows XP. By creating an encryption tunnel through the Internet, data can be passed safely.

Configuring ISA Server For Inbound VPN Calls

You've implemented a ISA/VPN Server to allow secure remote connections to your internal network. While you might have configured your VPN Server in a secure manner, what about your VPN clients? In this article I'll talk about important issues regarding VPN client configuration and how it impacts network security.

VPNs have been a topic of growing interest for the last couple years. However, since the tragic events in New York City in September of 2001, the subject has become red-hot. Why? Business and network managers now have a greater awareness that the weakest link in any design, whether it be a network or a business, is too high a level of centralization. Distributed systems are highly fault tolerant and difficult to bring down, while centralized systems can be brought to their knees with a single blow.