laserjet

Share a Windows 10 printer by UNC

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , ,

Windows 10 uses homegroups, but if you have systems that don’t understand homegroups and want to share a Windows 10 printer by UNC (the old school way to share a network printer), it’s not obvious how to go about doing it.

I couldn’t find a way from the GUI, but it’s still possible to share the printer from a command line.

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How to add a generic printer in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , ,
How to add a generic printer in Windows 10

Sometimes you need to add a generic printer in Windows 10.

Windows 10 makes the setup of newer hardware pretty automatic, but if you have a legacy or specialized printer that has to be set up as a generic printer in Windows, the process isn’t intuitive. Here’s how to set it up.

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Network printers with mismatched Windows versions

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Windows , , , , ,

Jim, one of the longest-running of my longtime readers, wrote in last week about his experiences getting a venerable HP Laserjet 1100 working between two dissimilar Windows machines. Network printers with mismatched Windows versions always present a challenge.

Not only that, as time wears on, new challenges rise up to replace any old ones that don’t exist anymore. I’ll let Jim share, then add my own experience.

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Add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10

Dave Farquhar Windows , , , , , , , ,
Add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10

Sometimes you have to manually add a TCP/IP printer in Windows 10. For example, I have an older HP Laserjet 4100 with a Jetdirect network card in it that I use to print from all of my PCs over my local area network (LAN). Getting Windows 10 to print to it isn’t difficult but it’s hardly intuitive.

If you have your network printer already set up but just need to change its IP address, I covered that here. If you want to share a locally attached printer with other computers on your network, you can do that too.

Printing straight to the TCP/IP address of the printer is convenient. It means you don’t have to have another computer powered up when you want to print.

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Gene Kim on scheduled maintenance

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

The excellent book The Phoenix Project has a choice quote that stuck with me.

In this scenario, the Yoda-like character asks the hero to imagine a company that makes deliveries. If the trucks break down, the deliveries stop, right? So you change the oil, since not changing the oil causes trucks to break down.

“Metaphors like oil changes help people make that connection. Preventative oil changes and maintenance policies are like preventative vendor patches and change management policies. By showing how IT risks jeopardize business performance measures, you can start making better business decisions.”

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Cable connections are the last thing most people check…

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

Fed up with trying to host a network printer on a Windows 7 box on a mixed network, I broke down and bought a Jetdirect card for my aged HP Laserjet 4100. Don’t worry–used Jetdirect cards are cheap these days. I paid $7 for mine.

Of course I made installing it harder than I needed to. I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home. Read more

Expect your HP printer to get 0wnz0r3d shortly

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

Courtesy of Dan Bowman: You may have seen the brief writeup on Slashdot about how to set printers on fire by messing with the fuser, but in Germany next month there’s going to be a security engineer’s nightmare unleashed, courtesy of the HP printer that’s probably sitting a few feet outside your cubicle and mine.

And there’s a whole lot more to it than just messing with the fuser in hopes of killing a printer or (perhaps) starting a fire. There’s a lot more to a printer than toner and a fuser. As the link above says, a printer contains an embedded Linux or Vxworks system that’s trivially easy to install a rootkit on and that nobody’s paying attention to. Seriously, who watches traffic coming from the printer?

The possibilities are endless.
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How I fixed an infuriating printer problem

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Troubleshooting, Windows , , ,

Windows 7 and my HP Laserjet 4100 weren’t getting along. And I was pretty livid about it. I paid $125 for my Windows 7 upgrade, and for that money, I got to mess around for 4 days trying to get better-than-1997 functionality out of what’s supposed to be the latest and greatest. I was about ready to trade it even up for a copy of Windows ME and Microsoft Bob. Because at least then I’d be able to print.

I finally fixed the problem, but finding the solution wasn’t easy. So I’ll present the symptoms and the ultimate solution here.

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Contingency. Or how I escaped from Windows 0.7

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

I thought I traced my Windows 0.7 printing problem to the presence of a USB bluetooth adapter, but it turned out that was wrong. My wife called about mid-day to say the machine wasn’t printing anymore.

Fortunately, I’d never gotten around to downgrading my netbook from Windows XP to Windows 0.7. It saved the day.

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Buy a used business printer and save a bundle

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,
Buy a used business printer and save a bundle

I’m through with cheap consumer printers.

Due to the nature of my wife’s work, we print a lot by home standards. We buy paper by the case, not the ream, and a case of paper probably lasts us a little more than six months.

Our workload just isn’t practical for the kind of printers you find next to the telephones at consumer electronics stores. So I bought an HP Laserjet 4100. And even if a case of paper lasts you a couple of years, you might want to buy an office-grade printer too.

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