WINNT SERVER printing problems...

[zione1]

Here's the problem...I assigned new ip's to the network. Now in order to change the ip's for the printers I needed to delete them from the server and then add them back. Except for the 1 HP printer it has a jet direct card in it and you can just edit the ip, but the rest of them you have to delete the printer and delete the port then add the port back and reload the printer drivers. This worked just fine (test pages printed). Now the problem is when I reboot the server all the ports I added disappear. Can someone tell me what's wrong or what I am doing wrong?

Thanx,

Zione

[glc]

How are these other printers connected? Print server? Parallel ports on the NT server? Parallel ports on individual workstations? More details, please.

[zione1]

All of the printers have built in network cards. So there connected to a switch which is connected to the server. Actually one printer is connected to the lpt1 on one of the workstations and it works just fine. Like I mentioned before the only printer that the server doesn't lose the connection to is the one with built in hp jet direct card.

[glc]

Okay - I assume that you only have one HP? What brands are the other printers, and what admin software are you using to set them up? I don't *think* you can use Jet Admin on other brands - you need to use the appropriate software to reconfigure them, or possibly the menus on the printer control panel itself. Does this give you any clues?

[zione1]

The other printers are actually high speed copiers that have proprietary network cards built into them. I don't use any administration software to setup them up or manage them cause I don't really have a need for it. Our network consists of 8 PC's, 5 printers, and a server.
What I do to set them up is this, on the printers themselves I key in the appropriate ip and subnet mask, on the server I go to add printer, I then add an lpr port, adding a port consists of keying in the appropriate ip, then it asks me to insert the driver disk. After this I print a test page and everything is fine until I reboot. Once I reboot I go into the printers folder and the printers are still there but they don't work because the ports I created are gone. The only thing left in there is the lpt1,lpt2,com1,com2,the HP plotter, and the location of the printer that is connected to lpt1 on one of the workstations.

[glc]

Sounds like your TCP/IP printing service or something is broken on the NT server - check to make sure it's starting automatically. You might need to reapply the latest service pack after reconfiguring.

[zione1]

Thanks for your help. Right now all printers are working so I'm not going to mess with it until I need to reboot. When the time comes to reboot I'll remove TCP/IP then add it back and see if that helps. By the way how do I check to see if TCP/IP is starting? I figure it must be because I never have any trouble with the workstations.

[glc]

No - this is a specific service - Microsoft TCP/IP Printing. It needs to have its startup set to Automatic. Without this service running, you can't even install an LPR port. You *are* logged in as the administrator or as a user in the administrators' group when you are doing this configuration, right?

[zione1]

O.K. now I know what your talking about. Yes it is setup to start automatically. I am logged on as administrator. Those are LPR ports that I am installing by the way.