[Discussion] USB printer configuration

Printers, HDDs, USB/eSATA drives, 3rd-party programs
QNAPRei
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[Discussion] USB printer configuration

Post by QNAPRei »

Please follow the steps below to configure your printer if your NAS detects the printer on the USB printer page but the printer icon is not shown in the share folder (via samba); or if your printer is very slow.

Verified for Windows XP users only:

1. Open Printers and Faxes.
2. Delete the existing network printer (if any).
3. Right click the blank area in the Printers and Faxes window. Select Server Properties.
4. Click the Ports tab and delete the ports configured for the previous network printer (if any).
5. Restart your PC.
6. Open Printers and Faxes.
7. Click Add a printer and click Next.
8. Select Local printer attached to this computer. Click Next.
9. Click Create a new port and select Local Port from the drop-down menu. Click Next.
10. Enter the port name. The format is \\NAS IP\NAS namepr, e.g. NAS IP= 192.168.1.1, NAS name= myNAS, the link is \\192.168.1.1\myNASpr.
11. Install the printer driver.
12. Print a test page.
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rxa
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Post by rxa »

10. Enter the port name. The format is \\NAS IP\NAS namepr, e.g. NAS IP= 192.168.1.1, NAS name= myNAS, the link is \\192.168.1.1\myNASpr
When I follow this step my port name is '\\192.168.1.65\naspr' although I get an error message displaying;

'Specified port cannot be added. Operation could not be completed.'

Where am I going wrong please?
bits
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Post by bits »

is your printer connected and turned on?
rxa
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Post by rxa »

bits wrote:is your printer connected and turned on?
Yeah - the NAS recognises and I can see the printer okay.
bits
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Post by bits »

I dont use qnap's guide, justu goto add printer, network printer, dont search type it as described \\ip\namePR

works a treat on xp and vista for me
rxa
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Post by rxa »

I dont use qnap's guide, justu goto add printer, network printer, dont search type it as described \\ip\namePR
Ace, following your instructions I installed the printer successfully. I still get a Print Server Error box report;
'The print server is down. Check the print server.' but this can only leave me to assume the LBP2900 isn't compatible with the 209.

Thanks for the directions though bits, it does the trick.
jens
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Post by jens »

rxa wrote:
10. Enter the port name. The format is \\NAS IP\NAS namepr, e.g. NAS IP= 192.168.1.1, NAS name= myNAS, the link is \\192.168.1.1\myNASpr
When I follow this step my port name is '\\192.168.1.65\naspr' although I get an error message displaying;

'Specified port cannot be added. Operation could not be completed.'

Where am I going wrong please?
Specified port cannot be added is usually because the port already exists. You should be able to select the port from the list if you hit the "back" button. I understand this still isn't working even though you now have a port. How about his then - The NAS is a *nix box so maybe you could use an Unix printing method. If you add a windows component from control panel/add remove software. You are looking for "Other file and print services" then "Unix print services" - from memory, sorry - you will need your OS disk. You should then be able to add an LPR port instead of a standard tcp/ip. Put in the ip address of the NAS in the top box and I'm not sure about the queue name, maybe PASSTHRU, lp or print. Dunno if it'll work, but you never know
bits
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Post by bits »

I got bored and tried to add the LPR port.
looking at lpc on the NAS it appears the daemon is not/can not start (it can not be started, a status checks still shows its stopped).

In printcap the nas1PR appears to be correctly listed etc so it should just be a case of getting the daemon started, but I gave up.
bdhufnagel
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Re: How to configure USB printer

Post by bdhufnagel »

Vista Home Premium

Forget about all the "Add Printer" stuff. Vista wouldn't let me add a printer because I didn't have the "rights" when logged in as the administrator. Seriously frustrating. Do this, instead.

1. Run QNAP Finder. Under "Name" is the name of the NAS. Under "IP Address" is the IP address. You will need both.
2. Click the Windows icon in the lower left corner to pop up the start menu.
3. In the "Start Search" box just above the Windows button, type, "\\IP Address\Namepr" using exactly what is shown by the QNAP Finder and adding a "pr" at the end - no spaces.
4. Hit the enter key and it will start searching for the printer. If it finds it, a window will pop up saying it doesn't have the printer driver and would you please choose one from the list. Good luck if yours isn't on the list because I can't speak to that issue: mine was on it.
5. The printer is now set up for your PC but needs to be shared. Go to "Control Panel", "Printers", if you're not already there, and right-click the mouse over it to select "Sharing..." from the pull-down. "Change Sharing Options" and share it. You should be good after that.
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DoctorSteve
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[HELP] - USB Printer Attach with Windows Vista

Post by DoctorSteve »

I have a preconfig TS-109, version 1.1.1 (110T)

I have my printer (Epson R200) plugged in and via the web interface I can see that the server has recogised the printer (under Device Config - USB Printer).
The manufacturer /model and status of "ready" is displayed.

However I can't get Windows Vista (Home Premium) to find the printer by using any of the above methods it fails with "Cannot connect to Printer, Makes sure that you typed the name correctly and the printer is connected to the network".
Eg using ip adresss/servername (followed by pr)

Does anyone have any ideas?
aljimenez
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Re: How to configure USB printer

Post by aljimenez »

I have a Dell All-in-One USB printer, Model # 922. This printer works as expected when attached to a pc's USB port with XP Professional installed.

When I connect this printer to the QNAP 209, the QNAP sees it and displays it in the Administration panel that shows USB printers. I have attached this printer to two of the USB ports and the QNAP 209 sees it appropriately. In my pc, when I query the shares from my QNAP, the printer is shown shared. Thus everything seems normal with the hardware.

However when I install the printer, either as described in the first post of this forum, or by installing the Network printer. The Dell printer driver informs that it does not communicate with the printer, Test Page is never printed, and thus this desirable feature of the QNAP is not working for me (everything else is working well with the latest Beta firmware 2.0.0.0). I have rumaged the DELL website and updated the printer driver but it has not solved the problem. Dell seems to imply that unix-OS is not supported for this printer, but I thought the QNAP would simply relay the communications from/to the printer from/to the pc driver transparently.

Are there any suggestions to get this USB printer to work?
1. 209Pro 3.3.0 Build 0903T
2. Windows 7-64bit Professional
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droopy
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Re: How to configure USB printer

Post by droopy »

Had similar problems. What worked for me is the following under Vista:

Start -> All Programms -> Accessories -> Run

Type: \\ip-address\servernamepr and hit Enter

System now asks for printer driver and does not give error messages.

Good luck
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aljimenez
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Re: How to configure USB printer

Post by aljimenez »

droopy wrote:Had similar problems. What worked for me is the following under Vista:

Start -> All Programms -> Accessories -> Run

Type: \\ip-address\servernamepr and hit Enter

System now asks for printer driver and does not give error messages.

Good luck
Thanks for your suggestions. My pc pops-up message box saying it is connecting, but never ends and needs to be canceled after many minutes of this. It just simply does not connect to this printer... Al
1. 209Pro 3.3.0 Build 0903T
2. Windows 7-64bit Professional
3. RAID 1: 2 x Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 ST6O
4. Services: Multimedia Station, UPnP, Download Station, Web, FTP, MySQL, daily NTP, surveillance
5. DLINK DIR-655 Router
6. NAS & pc: 1Gbit/s
howdens
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Re: How to configure USB printer

Post by howdens »

I ran into a problem which may be related to the issue with getting network printers to work reliably.

I found that Windows XP Home SP2 and Vista Home Premium both had this issue. I need to have an active disk share before I can print!??.... (I don't see any of the problem described below on my XP Professional machine, which is also in its own workgroup).

All my XP Home and Vista machines are in the same workgroup - usernames are synchronized across the different machines but passwords are not.

Now Windows (XP and Vista) can only provide one set of user credentials to any one network server per user session. Typically what happens is that the first time you map to a disk share on the QNAP box Windows saves the credentials you provided and uses them for every subsequent connection or at least checks that you are using the same ones each time. Therefore, if you connect a printer after you map a drive, windows uses the save credentials to access the printer share and everything works ok.

However, if you are just logging on after a reboot, or whatever, Windows does not appear to reactivate the disk shares until the first time you use them, or view their status in windows explorer, so there are no active credentials... therefore when you try to print you can't connect to the printer because in the absence of any authenticated active credentials Windows uses your local Windows username and password. If the usenames match but the passwords don't then the printer won’t connect and windows doesn't prompt you for a new password - gotcha. Of course if you reactivate one of the disk shares it will reactivate the QNAP server credentials and then you are ok.

My preferred solution, so far, is not to create persistent disk shares in Windows but instead I have created a netlogon.bat file that runs when I login which reconnects the drives manually and therefore established a set of saved credentials. Now my printer works ok. As a side note I have also been having problems with persistent connections re-prompting for a password when Windows automatically reconnects them - I think Windows is doing something unhelpful when it sees that the server username matches the Windows username and instead of using the saved password tries to use your Windows password instead?

A second solution might be to synchronize usernames and passwords between Windows and the QNAP server. I think this might work for Windows XP, but not so sure for Vista as I have noticed that when Vista creates credentials based on your Windows credentials it includes the workstation name as a domain prefix which may cause a mismatch on the QNAP server - XP doesn't seem to add the extra prefix so synchronization may work.

A third solution might be to ensure that your usernames do not match between the QNAP server and Windows so that windows doesn't try to do anything clever !? That way if Windows creates a set of credentials from your local Windows logon it wont match any users on the qnap and you will be treated as a guest and not prompted for a password.

There may be some clever registry tweaks to modify the behaviour of XP and Vista to avoid the need for the work around - anyone?
Model name - TS-209 / FW - 2.0.1 0324 / HDD RAID 1- Seagate ES 500GB x 2 / MTU - 1000/1500
Operation Systems (OS) - 1 x Vista x32, 2 x XP Home x32, 1 x XP Professional x32
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BoltonRed
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Re: [HELP] - USB Printer Attach with Windows Vista

Post by BoltonRed »

DoctorSteve wrote:I have a preconfig TS-109, version 1.1.1 (110T)

I have my printer (Epson R200) plugged in and via the web interface I can see that the server has recogised the printer (under Device Config - USB Printer).
The manufacturer /model and status of "ready" is displayed.

However I can't get Windows Vista (Home Premium) to find the printer by using any of the above methods it fails with "Cannot connect to Printer, Makes sure that you typed the name correctly and the printer is connected to the network".
Eg using ip adresss/servername (followed by pr)

Does anyone have any ideas?
I have the same printer and have suffered the same problems listed in this thread.... :cry:

Anyway I found a solution in another thread http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1804 which worked a treat, working now.

This is the answer..
Brummer wrote:Well now that was easy - after all :-)

The problem OBVIOUSLY was that I changed the server name from "nas" to "medianas".

This fact probably caused the print server utility not setting up my printer under the server name of "medianas" so that I couldn't find the shared printer under the name of the server "\\medianas\medianasPR" neither under the IP using this "\\192.x.x.x\medianasPR, although the printer was recognized via USB port on the TS-209.

So I gave it a try and renamed my nas server once again back to default server name "nas" and voilà suddenly my printer was visible in the share folder of the nas as well as the printer could be found over the network.

So now my printer is visible under
\\192.x.x.x\nasPR

The first couple of test pages printed out just fine using standard Kyocera FS-1020 and FS-1020D PCL and KX (extended) drivers. Duplex functions work like a charm as well. :-)

So well QNAP, your developers have to fix some bugs in this area.

Thanks again for you quick help, though!
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