I work at a K-12 school & have 3 laser printers attached to a windows NT 4.0 server. Our students have print permissions assigned to them, as they each have their own logon & password assigned. My problem is, I would like to "password protect" these printers so the student will have to ask teacher permission before they print a document (we're trying to cut down on wasted paper & ink, & stop them from printing things that aren't assignment-related). I can't take their permissions off, they do need access to the printers when they're logged on. Is there a separate download or utility that I can use (I'll install it on each workstation if I have to) that will give me a password prompt when they hit "print"? I want to set a uniform password that I can give to all teachers, I don't want it to prompt for the current user's password. Please help, this is becoming a very wasteful problem! Thank you...

Ummm... interesting one! The students need to be able to print when logged-on, but you want to be able to control what they print - which means - in effect - when they print? Do they need to have access to all three printers, or would access to just one (or two) be an option? Are there funds enough for an additional NTSvr system (this to act as stand-alone print server)? If so then it may be possible to control access to one or more printers (preferably just one?) that way; essentially stopping the print service (spooler) for the printer controlled by that server. The teacher/admin. could have access/permissions to do that - and students would not have access? Anything that requires the students to use a specific password entered by the student(s)to print (with teacher's persmission/approval) would soon become common knowledge; thus any password controlled system has to be off (independant of) their various PCs; the print server approach would/could allow this? Not sure the above is an ideal/viable solution; am doing a little more research etc. Incidentally an identical scenario was posted in another forum in 1999...

Linda Williams write me on (netwrap@hotmail.com).I also work in same environment as yours.We can share our security policy which we use at our school for student.About controlling the student printing , there a software where u can install on a server and allocate account to each student and each time they print their account is deduced.That can make printing service be cost center.My friends know wthe software name.When u write me i'll let u know san-i