Printer Sharing

[TheAnimus]

Someone is wanting to put a laser shared on an XP sp 2 pro box. The box is on a domain, but they want people who aren't auth'd against the domain or the box to be able to print?

Whats the best way of doing this? Guest account? I thought it might be possible to add security to the network resource "foobar\Epson C1100" of everyone and print. But if you try that a computer will fail to open it (even thou it can see it, and get some info from it).

Any ideas sugestions, i don't really want to have to enable the guest account for remote logon to that machine.

[Splash]

Why would they want unauthenticated users to be able to print to a network resource?

[chinny]

Hasn't that one got ethernet? http://www.epson.co.uk/products/lase...aser_C1100.htm
If so then just use IP based printing.

[Moby-Dick]

is the laser connected via USB then ?
How many people are you anticipating connecting to the printer ?

[TheAnimus]

Its via usb, the idea is that there will be few complete strangers accessing it.... i don't like this because people will need to install a driver, and i don't think they should have that trust. But anyway, i can't seam to dupe XP into doing it, I'm assuming there is a policy that stops it.

[Moby-Dick]

hows this for a different tack ?

get hold of a linkysys NSLU2 and a copy of the alternate firmware for it
plug a printer into 1 port
plus a USB key with the drivers in to the other port

problem solved

or failing that I'm sure there is a nice little app you can get that acts as a mail client, you mail a docuement to it and it will automatically print the attachments off.

so public access woudl mail guestprinter@domain.com and it would automatically print their docuemtn ?

[TheAnimus]

hmm i like the auto printing idea! But what format should people use, a form of postscript?

I guess its really anoying me that i can't figure out why the thing isn't working, as far as i can tell it should, the effective permissions sugest it should, its not a firewall issue, can't see a policy thats blocking it. Hence my frustration.

Fundemantally the idea is to make the wireless secure (eep), once there on that, printing is entirly at the user descression. But luckily you can't see the wireless outside the premesie, even with a rather good parabolic ariel.

[Moby-Dick]

ah so its a printer on a machine attached to a "public" zone.

I have a feeling you'll need to enable the local guest account on the machine to allow non authenticated users to access the spooler on it. Pushing drivers out is a bit of a mare though.
Also dont forget about the 10 concurrent connections rule with XP if you have a fair few people trying to access it.

http://www.office-addins.com/-outloo...r-outlook.html