Tech Tip: Sharing printers on Windows Server 2008

Sharing printers on a Windows Server 2003 is easy. Windows 2008 Server has increased security and sharing printers may require an additional step. Computers and users on the same domain or has an NTLM user account on the server will have no problems accessing shared printers. It’s the computers and users who are not on the domain or have an NTLM user account that sometimes have problems accessing the shared printers such as non-members or guests.

In Windows 2003 server and prior, if the user’s computer did not have the correct drivers the server would push the drivers to that computer to print. In Windows 2008 server, an additional explicit permission will have to be given for the server to give access to those drivers.

To give non-member or guest users access to those drivers you’ll need to access the folder: C:\Windows\System32\spool\driver and give that folder Read permissions to the Guest account.

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