Reader Challenge

Printing Problems
[Editor's Note: Solve this month's Windows NT problems and get the chance to win $100 or a copy of one of the author's books about NT. Email your solutions to challenge@winntmag.com. Include your full name, mailing address, and connection to NT (e.g., administrator, user). Because of the number of entries, we cannot reply to all respondents. To add to the author's collection of NT problems, email problems and solutions to answers@voicenet.com. Look for the solutions to this month's problems in the December issue. For the solution to the June Reader Challenge, see "June winners.]

Printing is one of the most complicated processes an operating system (OS) performs. When printing works properly, it seems simple. However, printing problems are common.

Problem 1
A small drug-testing company produces long reports that include illustrations of interactions among elements and compounds. The company has only one printer, so the owner configures it to print the reports after hours. The company needs to print correspondence and short documents daily. How do you use one printer for overnight printing and immediate printing?

Problem 2
A client who produces company newsletters has a print job stuck in the queue. Other jobs are stuck behind it. The client tries unsuccessfully to delete the print job. The client needs the next job in the queue to print quickly. What is the quickest way to force the second print job?

Problem 3
A law firm uses two workstations as print servers. Each workstation has a printer. The printers are always busy, and users often retrieve other users' documents by mistake. From her workstation (which is running NT Workstation 4.0), the administrator configures the printers to print banner pages to alleviate this problem. The administrator receives no error messages, but only one printer prints the banner pages. Why doesn't the other printer print the banner pages?

Congratulations to Greg Bundy, a network systems administrator with the American Academy of Periodontology in Chicago, Illinois, and Andrew Warren of ComSurf Systems in Scotland. Greg won first prize of $100 for the best solution to the June Reader Challenge. Andrew won second prize of a copy of Windows NT Troubleshooting (Osborne/McGraw-Hill).

The brief solution follows. For a complete explanation, see the Windows NT Magazine Web site (http://www.winntmag.com). Enter 3807 in the InstaNT Doc text box.

Solution
Arnold spends a week tweaking his company's computers. He sends a report of his accomplishments to the company's executives to impress them. Arnold's boss obtains a copy of the report, knows he's lying about certain items, and fires him. The following solution lists Arnold's claims and whether they are true:

• Used Server Manager to promote the word processing applications server (which was not a domain controller) to a BDC. FALSE

• Installed NT Server 4.0 over NT Workstation 4.0 (used the same directory) to turn the design department's workstation number 4 into a BDC.FALSE

• Installed NT Server 4.0 over NT Workstation 4.0 (used the same directory) to turn the human resources department's workstation number 11 into an application server for the company database. TRUE

• Used the Send Message function in Server Manager to tell all company users about the new location of the company database. PROBABLY FALSE

• Created trust relationships between New York and Boston and between New York and Chicago to permit trusted logons between Boston and Chicago. Logged on test users successfully. FALSE

• Put a note on every monitor to instruct users to skip reading the menu and press 4 if they get an error message saying they must load the Last Known Good configuration. Tested the process to make sure it works. FALSE

• Edited MSDOS.SYS on all dual-booting machines to make Windows 95 the default system. Removed all lines below the first semicolon to save disk space. Win95 users are now running all software, including legacy applications, with no problems. FALSE

• Created a batch file on all administrative department workstations to use XCOPY to transfer local document files to the server. Created an individual target share on the server for each workstation. TRUE, BUT REQUIRES AN ADDITIONAL STEP

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