HiDeHo, We have a network of 8 computers and a print server that serves 3 printers. When printing it takes some time to print. It can take up to a minute for the print job to be loaded to the printers (Our print files are large). I think it's because the print server doesn't have a whole lot of memory. In the past I've been able to trick the computers into thinking the network server is actually a local printer port and so the print jobs would spool the jobs to the print server in the background and wouldn't totally stop work on the computer. We recently had to get a new print server because our old one died. I was unable to set the print server up as a local port since. What I would like to do is designate one computer as a print server to the print server. Is there a way to share a network print server on one computer. I've tried sharing a printer that is served by a print server and have been unsuccessful. All of our computers have XP pro. Back to top

with xp you can share a network printer, Just map the printer to you'r computer. Right click on the captured printer, left click on properties on advance tab check start print after last page is spooled. Then ok. Then right click on you'r printer click on sharing, and give the printer a share name. Thats about it. for more info just let me know, keith !

You don't state what kind of "Print Server" you have. Is this some off the shelf device? That would explain why the jobs take so long to spool to the printer. Those types of devices have little, if any, memory and the jobs are only redirected to the printer. If you are going to designate a computer for this task, you might as well set up a "real" print server. In other words, use the computer as a server to manage the printing. Not sure, but if you dont have the time/money/experience to set up a Windows 2000/2003 server, there might be software available to run on XP to provide this functionality. Or, you could use Linux. There are many good tutorials on how to set up a print server with Linux. The advantage of having a computer print server is that you can spool the jobs to the server which takes less time than spooling to the printer. Michael J

what kind of printers are these, do the have ethernet cards? Do you own jet direct software or jet direct boxes at all or are you just sharing the printers? How much ram do they have?

If it were me, depending on what type of print server device you bought, I'd share it, and set the printer(s) up on each PC to spool locally on that PC before sending to the print server.