Print Spooler Problems with NIS 2007

[gtucker329]

Hello all,

Found an exceedingly frustrating problem at my office that prohibits me from printing to our HP CLJ 3600 printer. The printer is networked and I installed the printer through the supplied disk. I was able to print a test page with no problems. When I tried to print a document; i.e. excel, word, pdf, etc; I get a pop up stating that the print spooler could not find the printer.... I checked everything I could on my settings and found nothing amiss. The real catcher is that no one else in the office is experiencing the same issue. The only difference between me and everyone else is that I run NIS 2007 on my computer. I then proceeded to try and turn off a few settings in NIS 2007 and bingo! Turning off the personal firewall setting allows me to print just fine. Now I just need to figure out what settings in the personal firewall I need to change to allow me to print, but not have the annoying warnings from NIS if I just turn the firewall off. Does anyone have experience with this type of error/problem with NIS 2007? I'd talk to symantec if they didn't want 30 bucks to talk to a human being on the phone. Also we run lean at my office so we don't employ a local IT guy and the one in California has no clue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mojo]

At my college help desk we had lots of problems with faculty and staff being able to print when service pack 2 rolled out and turned on the firewall by default. Open up TCP port 515 for print spooler to be able to communicate with the outside world.

[glc]

Doesn't that give you the hint that you shouldn't be using NIS? If you are behind a router you don't need it. That's a home solution, not a business solution anyway. HP network printers work fine through the Windows firewall.

[gtucker329]

The funny thing is that I had NIS 2005 before I installed 2007 and I didn't have any problems. I understand that the personal firewall function isn't really needed when you are behind a router but the company paid for NIS 2007 so there you go. Also I travel to China quite frequently and you can catch some seriously nasty stuff there. I am sure that there is a way to allow a rule in the personal firewall settings that will permit printing at my office without disabling the firewall. I just don't mess around with antivirus software enough to know what I am doing.

[mojo]

Did you open up port 515?

[cmillar6]

The NIS firewall by default blocks file and print sharing, this is your problem. All you have to is put the IP address of the printer in the "trusted zone" in your firewall settings and you will then be able to print to it. The windows firewall does exactly the same thing but when you run the networking wizard for you it allows file and print sharing for you.

[gtucker329]

I'm not familiar with port 515 Mojo. Can you clarify? I'll try putting the IP address in the trusted area to see if that resolves the problem too.

[mojo]

In any firewall there's an option to add openings for specific ports. You need to enter the port (1-63535) and choose TCP or UDP. Open port 515, TCP. Anyone know for sure if he needs to open it for incoming, outgoing, or both?

[glc]

Installing a HP printer with a print server will open the needed ports in the XP firewall during the install process, but Norton is just going to laugh at it.