New Print Management Functions in Windows 7 | The DocuMentor | ZDNet.com
Windows 7 introduces improvements to printing in Windows that provide increased performance and reliability for print users. For IT administrators who remotely manage network print resources, these enhancements provide more flexibility and better management overall.
What are the new and changed features?
Print Management provides the following new and improved features to Windows printing:
Print migration enhancements
The Printer Migration Wizard (available through the Print Management snap-in) and the Printbrm.exe command-line tool were introduced in Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Vista® to replace the Print Migrator (Printmig) utility. These enable an administrator to easily back up, restore, and migrate print queues, printer settings, printer ports, and language monitors.
Enhancements to the Printer Migration Wizard and Printbrm.exe in Windows 7 provide greater flexibility and better error handling and reportingâ€â€for example, you can now restore configuration information for print servers and print queues in a backup. You can also selectively back up specific print processors and print language monitors.
There is also support for print driver isolation setting migration and an option to not restore security settings for print queues during a restore operation.
Printer driver isolation
Prior to Windows 7, the failure of printer driver components has been a main print server support issueâ€â€the failure of a printer driver loaded onto the print spooler process would cause the process to fail, which would lead to an outage of the entire printing system. The impact of a spooler failure on a print server is particularly significant because of the large number of users and printers that are typically affected.
In Windows 7, you can now configure printer driver components to run in an isolated process separate from the printer spooler process. By isolating the printer driver, you can prevent a faulty printer driver from stopping all print operations on a print server, which results in a significant increase in server reliability.
In addition to the benefit of improving overall printing system stability, this new feature provides a means to isolate new drivers for testing and debugging, and to identify which printer drivers have been causing spooler failures.
Windows 7 introduces improvements to printing in Windows that provide increased performance and reliability for print users. For IT administrators who remotely manage network print resources, these enhancements provide more flexibility and better management overall.
What are the new and changed features?
Print Management provides the following new and improved features to Windows printing:
- Print migration enhancements
- Printer driver isolation
- Print Management snap-in improvements
- Client-Side Rendering (CSR) performance improvements
- XML Paper Specification (XPS) print path improvements
- Location-aware printing
Print migration enhancements
The Printer Migration Wizard (available through the Print Management snap-in) and the Printbrm.exe command-line tool were introduced in Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Vista® to replace the Print Migrator (Printmig) utility. These enable an administrator to easily back up, restore, and migrate print queues, printer settings, printer ports, and language monitors.
Enhancements to the Printer Migration Wizard and Printbrm.exe in Windows 7 provide greater flexibility and better error handling and reportingâ€â€for example, you can now restore configuration information for print servers and print queues in a backup. You can also selectively back up specific print processors and print language monitors.
There is also support for print driver isolation setting migration and an option to not restore security settings for print queues during a restore operation.
Printer driver isolation
Prior to Windows 7, the failure of printer driver components has been a main print server support issueâ€â€the failure of a printer driver loaded onto the print spooler process would cause the process to fail, which would lead to an outage of the entire printing system. The impact of a spooler failure on a print server is particularly significant because of the large number of users and printers that are typically affected.
In Windows 7, you can now configure printer driver components to run in an isolated process separate from the printer spooler process. By isolating the printer driver, you can prevent a faulty printer driver from stopping all print operations on a print server, which results in a significant increase in server reliability.
In addition to the benefit of improving overall printing system stability, this new feature provides a means to isolate new drivers for testing and debugging, and to identify which printer drivers have been causing spooler failures.
