Windows 10: Creating two different printer drivers on the same printer?

Hi,

I work in IT doing Help Desk/Support for a company.

We want to give standard users restricted assess to a printer. If they are a manager they can print in colour, but if they are just a standard staff member they only get the option to print in black & white.

An example would be using a black & white driver for a colour printer. People who print to the Black & White device driver won't have the option for colour.

Is this possible and how so using Windows 10 & 7.

Thank you.








:)

 

Windows print problem. Every Time! Printer prints job, but on PC it still says "Printing" and no additional job will print.

As i said, this is with two different printers on two different networks. So it does not seem possible that BOTH different printer drivers failed at the same time. It must be a WINDOWS problem, not a printer-driver problem.

Any other suggestions for a WINDOWS fix for this vexing situation?

Thanks!

 

Windows print problem. Every Time! Printer prints job, but on PC it still says "Printing" and no additional job will print.

As i described, this is happening with TWO DIFFERENT printers on two different networks. So, it cannot be a printer problem or a network problem.

It does not seem possible that two different printer drivers failed at the same time. The problem MUST be at the WINDOWS level if it is happening with multiple printers.

Any other ideas for something to fix at the WINDOWS level?

Thanks!

 

I'm a Windows 7 person, however, perhaps I can give an educated guess. For the managers, create a color printer using the printer's provided drivers [or let Windows Update get them]. For the standard user, create a black and white printer coming as close to the specs of the color printer as possible. Let's say Zumba 2000A is the color printer. Give the managers Zumba 2000A. Give the standard users Zumba 1000A, the black and white printer. You will need to test from standard users' computers to see if this idea will work for each standard user. For a different reason, I did that once. I "created" an HP Laser Series II "printer" [which WU generously supplied the drivers for] , then installed my Brother HL-1440 [again WU generously provided the drivers for this printer also]. Solved my printing problem. Awhile later, finally, I was able to jettison both printers and just install the Brother printer correctly.

 

It cannot be done. Everything needs to be loaded by a script when they log into the domain. If the drivers are pre-installed for the printer that the section their workstation is located in. Along with if all of the printers should be all the same models and generation. No one is allowed to roam out to a printer server outside of the area they work in. There is not much else.

You really do not and have never needed two drivers for the same device.

 

bro67, what the thread starter wants to do: managers use X printer for color printing, standard users use X printer for only black and white printing. The only way to "split the printer into color and into blackNwhite" is to have X printer functioning as two printers, with two sets of drivers, one set "Zumba 2000A" for the managers, the other set "Zumba 1000A" for standard users. One physical printer available to all, just "split into two sofware-wise."

 

Roland I know what the OP wants and it cannot be done. They need to have a Color Printer restrcted to the Management group that would only need access to it. For employees, they just need to restrict them to a Laser Printer for that group.

For example. In all of the offices that I worked at, only one had the printers set up to sections of four on each floor.

Each Section could hold up to 20 people, so you had a Laser in a pod of 50 users and a fallover if the main went offline.

Your workstation was setup with a GPO and a script, that when you moved to a certain "Pod". You could not access say the printer in your old pod, unless it was the fallover.

So basically you can do Management to have a Laser and a Color. But you cannot give the users Black and White only on a Color Inkjet or laser, because th way that the drivers are set up.

Now I can if I wanted to in a Samba Server, restrict users to not be able to manage their printer settings and only the administrator that has access to the CUPS webpage or Zentyal server can only make the changes.

We are talking about stuff that you do not get into at the basic level for what the OP is talking about. We are talking higher level when it comes to knowing how to do this properly, without causing other issues.

 

"...We are talking about stuff that you do not get into at the basic level for what the OP is talking about. We are talking higher level when it comes to knowing how to do this properly, without causing other issues..." bro67
bro67, you're right as rain! I was thinking back to my old Novell/WFW3.11 network days, back when Fred Flintstone and I would create our documents upon stone tablets. Everything is so different now! Thanks for the nice reminder! *Smile

 

Surely this is possible. My boss said his done this before. He wants me to work it out by myself though. He said I'm allowed to post on the forums for help!

Come on guys, we can do this!

 

Your boss is bsing you. It cannot be done in any way, unless you are using a Linux Server running CUPS.

 

RolandJs oh those were the days. Walk down to some other section, because wither the printer was down, or someone decided to print out a whole volume of every code ran in the past Century.

Even more fun was finding out that you could not get your print job to run, because you have 12 others in front of it, with only two printers available, unless you want to go to another building or in my case, it was walk clear across the ship and up to the Data unit and have them run the job, if they were not running checks.

 

sinfulangle: reworking a piece of my earlier post: ...what I'm suggesting is that "you lie" [*] to at least each standard users' computer as to what that one single printer is on the network:
Managers use X printer for color printing,
standard users use the same X printer for only black and white printing.
The only way to "split that one X printer into color and into blackNwhite" is to have that one X printer functioning:
-- as "two printers"
-- I think within "Add Printer," installing printer drivers:
-- one set of drivers "Zumba 2000AColor" [*] on the managers' PCs -- aimed at that one single X printer
-- the other set of drivers "Zumba 1000AB&W" [*] on the standard users' PCs -- aimed at that one single X printer
One physical printer, available to all, Zumba 2000A color icon on managers' PCs,
That same one physical printer, available to all, Zumba 1000A B&W icon on standard users' PCs.

for sinfulangle: IF the above can be done, do it, test it. Make sure each computer with its own set of drivers actually prints to that one single printer; managers=color, std users=B&W.
"To lie" may not work at all!! If such tactics will not work on networks, so be it.
If the above cannot be done, well, In Search Of [Finding Nimoy] continues!

 

RolandJS, this post is almost word for word from one posted in 2010 on a Stackexchange post.

The only problem is that unless you lock everyone down to not make any system changes. There are ways around the lock to fool the printer.

Most color printers do not use just Black and White. They will also use the color for shades of Gray.

 

"...Most color printers do not use just Black and White. They will also use the color for shades of Gray..."
bro67, networks have changed from my earlier days *Smile Yes, many many printers use color for shades of gray. I guess the thread starter will continue the search for an answer that may not exist.

 

Both of my current printers, an Ink-Jet and a full colour laser, use the CMYK system, As do most colour printers that I have used over many years. The do have the option of mixing the colour Inks to produce an approximation of Black and White, (greyscale), these are often not a great approximation, with a lot of colour cast issues.

Normally both printers will, if set to print in black and white or greyscale, just use the Black Ink / Toner and dithering to provide a true grey scale image, (as you would expect to get from a monochrome printer ), They are often using micro dot print head to mix within the "pixel" size that they are stated to work at

To aid in this Black & White and greyscale requirement the black cartridge is more that twice the size of the colour cartridges, as most prints will be black text only *Smile

As for the original question it should be possible by the use of permissions, ( if the printer driver is sophisticated enough).

set up the print driver to print in greyscale but only give managers permissions to change settings on the print driver. I'm sure that a number of printers I have used in business applications had network drivers that could be synchronised with the Active Directory groups used in the company