How
can I increase the priority
of the print spooler?
|
By default, the print spooler runs at the same priority
as other services. However, if you have a system that you
use primarily for printing, you can increase the print spooler's
priority by performing the following steps:
- Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
- Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\Control\Print registry subkey.
- From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
- Enter the name SpoolerPriority, then press Enter.
- Double-click the new value, then set it to 1 (0 is the
default value).
- Click OK.
- Reboot the machine for the change to take effect.
How
can I let nonadministrative
users redirect LPT1?
|
Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 don't let nonadministrative
users redirect the LPT1 port (i.e., net use lpt1 \\server\printer
/yes). To work around this restriction (e.g., for legacy
applications that require users to print to a redirected
LPT1 port), you can disable LPT1 in Device Manager so that
users can redirect LPT1. Perform the following steps:
- Start Device Manager (go to Start, Programs, Administrative
Tools, Computer Management, and select Device Manager).
- Expand Ports (COM & LPT).
- Right-click Printer Port (LPT1), then select Properties.
- Under "Device usage," select "Do not use this device
(disable)."
- Click OK.
Disabling LPT1 in Device Manager makes it a logical port
(such as LPT2 and LPT3) instead of a physical port.
How
can I print to a USB printer
from the command prompt?
|
You typically print to a parallel-port printer by copying
a file to the lpt1: device. Because USB devices don't connect
through an LPT device, you can't take the same approach
to print to a USB printer from the command prompt. However,
you have several options that will work.
If a network adapter is connected to your network, you
can share the printer with another machine on the network
and map the printer to LPT2 or LPT3. For example,
net use LPT2 \\<machine>\<printer share> /yes
shares the printer on LPT2. By sharing the printer, you
can copy files from the command prompt to the printer on
that port.
If you don't have a network adapter, you can install the
Microsoft loopback adapter, which emulates a network adapter,
create a printer share on your machine, then use the "net
use" command to print to the printer share.
Alternatively, if the USB printer is your machine's default
printer, you can use Microsoft Notepad to print an ASCII
file to the printer. For example,
start /min notepad /P <filename>
prints the file from Notepad to the printer, where <filename>
is the name of any file that you can open in Notepad that
you want to print. You don't have to include "start /min"
for this technique to work, but you will want to include
this command if you're printing from a batch file to minimize
the command window while the batch file runs. Otherwise,
the Notepad executable will steal focus away from the batch
file that issues this command and could stall the batch
file after printing is complete. To continue processing
the batch file, you'd need to click the command window.
