Technical Note - Printing From a Windows Laptop (or Desktop)

Summary

The CUPS printing system now in use at ECS provides an improved interface to Windows systems. This document details the process of adding a printer to a Windows system.

Details

Adding Printers

1. If you are using the VUW wireless network, authenticate to it first.
2. Go to the Printers and Faxes Control panel and click on "Add a printer". Note there may be a significant pause before the next windows appears.
3. Select "Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer".
4. Ignore any printers that show up in the pane, and click "The printer I want isn't listed".
5. Select "Select a shared printer by name" and type in the address field: http://printers.ecs.vuw.ac.nz:631/printers/printername where printername is the name of the printer queue, such as "press". Click "Next".
6. A new window will pop up enabling you to select the type of printer. You can find the current make/model of our printers from our CUPS server.
7. Click "OK" and wait as the driver is installed, then click "Next", then (perhaps after selecting "Set as the default printer") click "Finish".
8. Configure the printer by right clicking on its icon and selecting "Printer Properties". We can provide advice regarding this step if required. In general you should configure the number of trays, A4 paper and duplex mode.

Configuring HP printers

We use the "HP Universal Printing PS" (note the PS for Postscript) driver. This driver is available from \\smb.ecs.vuw.ac.nz\software\HPdrivers\Drivers\UPDps-x64\ (which should be a shortcut to the current most recent driver folder). If you are presented with several different .inf files, any one of them will suffice.

In addition to the above configuration settings you should set "optimize postscript for portability".

Configuring FujiXerox printers/copiers

The drivers can be found in \\smb\software\FujiXerox\Drivers\Win7X64\, with individual shortcuts for each model e.g. fxap4c3370ps for the FujiXerox ApeosPort IV-C3370 copier.

When configuring the printer, note that for recent copiers or printers there is a Configuration tab, with an Installable Options pane, where tray types, input options and finishing options are specified. For the older printers this is achieved within the Device Settings tab. Further, the correct settings can be confirmed by clicking Apply and checking the printer image (displayed in the Printing Defaults windows of the Advanced tab) with the look of the physical printer.

Note:

• Administrator privilege is necessary to add network printers.
• More general printing information can be found in the printing tech note.

Printing To Added Printers

• Printing to any of our printers that automatically produce 2-up output (2 pages reduced and rotated on each side of an A4 sheet) should work without any further configuration
• Printing to any of our printers in 1-up format requires that your ECS login has a 1-up printing allocation and that your Windows username matches your ECS one.
• If you want to print in 1-up format and your Windows and ECS usernames do not match, but you are an ECS staff member, graduate student or visitor you can request a mapping be set up. Send a message to jobs@ecs.vuw.ac.nz specifying your ECS and laptop usernames. We will not map the user "Administrator".

Note:

• ECS usernames are always all lowercase, but Windows often uses usernames which have an initial capital letter. Such a Windows username will not match the same ECS username that is all in lowercase.