Morna Findlay 4-8-06

Setting up Informatics printers under Windows

This web page describes how to set up Informatics printers on a computer running Microsoft Windows XP. Although these instructions are for XP only, I would expect the process to be similar on other Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Note that you must have a valid DICE username and password and a samba account before you can print to Informatics printers. See below for details on registering for a samba account.

Setting up a printer to print via SAMBA

For information on what SAMBA is, and how to register to use it under DICE, please see the document here

Note that to find out information about a printer's name, location and so on, use the lpstat -l -p <printername> command under DICE.

• Open the Printers and Faxes control panel and double-click Add Printer
• When prompted on whether the printer is local or on a network, select A network printer....
• When asked which printer, select Connect to this printer... and in the Name box enter \\smb.inf.ed.ac.uk\printername, replacing 'printername' with the name of the printer (e.g. bp3). You may be asked for your samba username and password at this stage. Also, you may receive a message from Windows asking you to confirm that you want to continue - click Yes.
• Next you'll be prompted to search for a printer driver for the printer - click OK and use the dialog box that appears to locate a driver for the Make and Model of printer. Make sure you select the PS postscript version of the driver. (You may have to download a driver from the manufacturer website)
• You should check the settings for the printer, e.g. it is recommended that you set the printer up to print double-sided.
• You can now print a test page for the printer.

Note that you may have to authenticate yourself to smb.inf.ed.ac.uk every time you log in to Windows, particularly if your Windows username and password differ from your samba username and password or if the printer was installed under Windows by a different user. To open a connection to smb.inf.ed.ac.uk at any time, go to Start->Run and type \\smb.inf.ed.ac.uk. You can also map a network drive to a share on smb.inf.ed.ac.uk (e.g. \\smb.inf.ed.ac.uk\homes for your home directory) from the Tools menu in My Network Places. The advantage of mapping a network drive is that it can be configured to automatically connect to the share every time you log in.