Version 3 driver
In an effort to increase operating system stability, Microsoft determined that starting with Windows 2000, continuing with all future operating systems, printer drivers would run as
Windows NT 4.0 is capable of running only
The following table shows the driver versions that are supported by Microsoft for each operating system.
Table 84: Operating system and driver version support |
| |
Operating system | Version 2 | Version 3 |
Windows NT 4.0 | x |
|
Windows 2000 | x | x |
Windows XP | x | x |
Windows Server 2003 | x1 | x |
1Windows 2003 Server does not officially support
Point and Print in a mixed operating system environment
When using Point and Print, the print queue configuration is stored on, and managed from, the print server. Client computers get the print queue configuration and the printer driver from the print server. Changes to the printer driver on the server, or its configuration, are automatically replicated to the client.
In a homogenous operating system environment (all of the clients and servers are running the same operating system), the printer driver that is vended from the server to the clients in a Point and Print environment is the same printer driver that is running and controlling the print queue configuration on the server. In this case, there is no doubt that the client computer can correctly interpret the print queue configuration and printing behaves as expected.
However, in a mixed operating system environment that typically occurs during an operating system migration, there are situations in which client computers could be running a different version of the printer driver than the one that is running on the print server. In order for this situation to work correctly, the printer driver that is running on the client must be capable of correctly interpreting the configuration that was created by the printer driver running on the print server. (Microsoft refers to the data structure in which this configuration is stored as the DEVMODE, but for the purposes of this section, we refer to this as the print queue configuration.)
The following figure illustrates a situation involving a Windows NT 4.0 print server that is supporting a mixed client base of Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 clients. Because the server is running Windows NT 4.0, it is running a
When Windows NT 4.0 clients make a connection to this shared printer on the Windows NT 4.0 print server, it is vended the same
Software Technical Reference ENWW | Print server operating system migration | 207 |