HP 9500n HP Color LaserJet 9500n and 9500hdn - Software Technical Reference - Page 268
Symptoms of driver incompatibility in a mixed OS environment, PCL 6
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Symptoms of driver incompatibility in a mixed OS environment There is no single set of symptoms to be seen when client and server printer drivers are not compatible, but common symptoms include the clients not being able to see the proper queue configuration with respect to installed device options and default settings. Other problems in functionality can include the inability to print in landscape or from a specific paper tray. When an incompatible mix of version-2 and version-3 printer drivers is present in the environment, unexpected behavior can occur due to some of the more subtle behaviors of Point and Print that are not obvious. The following figures illustrate an environment that contains incompatible version-2 and version-3 printer drivers. This section examines examples of how incompatible drivers can affect printing functionality. In the example illustrated in the following figure, there is a Windows NT 4.0 print server and a Windows 2000 print server. The Windows 2000 client illustrated in this figure is a laptop computer user who occasionally travels between different office locations for business. In Event #1, at the home office, the Windows 2000 client makes a connection to the local print server. This local print server is running Windows NT 4.0 and contains only a version-2 driver for the printer in question. Suppose, for example, that this is the "HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6" version-2 driver. The Windows 2000 client is vended this version-2 printer driver and because client and server are both running the same printer driver, printing works as expected. In Event #2, the client takes a business trip to a remote site. While at the remote site, the client user needs to print and makes a connection to a shared printer. The server for this shared printer at the remote site is hosted from a print server that has been migrated to Windows 2000 and contains a version-3 driver, which is also the "HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6" printer driver. Now, the client computer already has a printer driver named "HP LaserJet 4000 Series PCL 6", but it is a version-2 driver and Windows 2000 prefers to use a version-3 printer driver when it is available. So in this case, because the print server at the remote site has a matching driver, which is version-3, the Windows 2000 client downloads this version-3 driver and now runs this printer driver. The connection to the remote print server silently upgraded the client computers printer driver to a version-3 driver. While still at the remote site, the client and server are both running the same printer driver and printing works as expected. However at Event #3, when the client returns to the home office and tries to print, problems occur because the printer driver being used on the client is not the same as that being used on the server and these two printer drivers are incompatible with each other. 266 Print server operating system migration Software Technical Reference ENWW