HP Designjet Universal Print Driver: Installation and Deployment Guide, Study notes of Printing

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Designjet Universal Print Driver

System Administrator’s Guide

• 1 Purpose and scope
  • Introduction
  • Conventions used in this guide
  • HP Designjet UPD Supported products
• 2 Software description
  • Introduction
  • System requirements
  • Software availability
• 3 Plan an HP Designjet UPD deployment...........................................................................................................................
  • The five steps to a successful deployment
  • Initiation and planning
  • Understand your printing requirements and environment
  • Key deployment decisions
  • Communication and training
  • Training
  • Conducting a pilot
  • Deploy to production
• 4 Installing and Uninstalling the HP Designjet UPD
  • Supported Modifications of the Hewlett-Packard Designjet Universal Print Driver
  • Determine the HP DJ UPD version installed
  • Microsoft Windows Driver Architecture
  • HP DJ UPD Supported Upgrades
  • HP DJ UPD installation methods
  • Explanation of driver name........................................................................................................................................
  • Best practices — upgrade..........................................................................................................................................
  • Driver upgrade steps..................................................................................................................................................
  • Uninstall the HP UPD
• 5 HP Designjet UPD Features and Use Cases
  • Use Case
  • Use Case
  • Update Current Printer Model functionality
  • Current model: setting it manually
  • Current model: setting it automatically.....................................................................................................................
  • User profile considerations for Current model
  • Current model in client-server
  • Generic Printer
  • UI Features
  • Print Quality
  • Margins.......................................................................................................................................................................
  • Document size............................................................................................................................................................
  • Media Type
  • Differences with discrete driver
  • Features re-layout
  • Services tab
  • Alerts
• Appendix: Visual Basic Script

Table 1-2 products supported by HP Designjet UPD

Model name HP DJ UPD HP-GL/2 support HP DJ UPD PostScript support HP Designjet T120 Yes (PCL3GUI) No HP Designjet T520 24in Yes No HP Designjet T520 36in Yes No

HP Designjet T790 24in Yes No HP Designjet T790ps 24in Yes Yes

HP Designjet T790 44in Yes No HP Designjet T790ps 44in Yes Yes HP Designjet T795 44in Yes No

HP Designjet T795ps 44in Yes Yes HP Designjet T920 Yes No

HP Designjet T920 PostScript Yes Yes HP Designjet T1300 Yes No

HP Designjet T1300 PostScript Yes Yes HP Designjet T1500 Yes No

HP Designjet T1500 PostScript Yes Yes HP Designjet T2300 Yes No

HP Designjet T2300 PostScript Yes Yes HP Designjet T2500 Yes No HP Designjet T2500 PostScript Yes Yes

HP Designjet T3500 Yes No HP Designjet T3500 PostScript Yes Yes

HP Designjet T7100 Monochrome Yes No HP Designjet T7100ps Monochrome Yes Yes

HP Designjet T7100 Yes No HP Designjet T7100ps Yes Yes

HP Designjet T7200 Yes No HP Designjet T7200ps Yes Yes HP Designjet Z6200 42in Photo Yes No

HP Designjet Z5400 PostScript No Yes HP Designjet Z6200ps 42in Photo Yes Yes

HP Designjet Z6200 60in Photo Yes No HP Designjet Z6200ps 60in Photo Yes Yes

HP Designjet Z6600 Yes No HP Designjet Z6600ps Yes Yes

HP Designjet Z6800 Photo Yes No HP Designjet Z6800ps Photo Yes Yes

2 Software description

Introduction

The HP Designjet Universal Print Driver helps eliminate print environment confusion by dramatically reducing the number of drivers required. The HP Designjet Universal Print Driver offers the same functionality as supported printers. For non-supported Designjet printers, there is broad compatibility with the generic model. HP Broad compatibility ensures it works with many HP Designjet print products, often reducing driver use to a single driver.

 The HP Designjet Universal Print Driver works well with a broad range of networked HP Designjet print products using HP-GL/2 or Adobe® PostScript®. HP products share state-of-the-art technology, allowing the HP Designjet Universal Print Driver to support complex capabilities across many HP products, making them easier to use, support, certify, and deploy.

 Local language drivers available in 13 languages.

 The HP Universal Print Driver supports HP-GL/2 and PostScript printer languages.

 By providing real-time print job and print product information, the HP Designjet Universal Print Driver empowers you to resolve common problems yourself, and place fewer calls to the help desk resulting in faster problem resolution, improved printer uptime, and increased productivity.

System requirements

The following are the minimum system requirements for HP DJ UPD: Client operating systems supported:  Microsoft Windows 7 Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate; x86 and x

 Microsoft Windows 8, Pro and Enterprise editions; x86 and x

 Microsoft Windows 8.1, Pro and Enterprise editions; x86 and x

Server operating systems supported:  Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Enterprise and Standard Editions

o Architectures: x

o Services: Terminal Server, Cluster Server

 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Enterprise and Standard Editions

o Architectures: x86 and x

o Services: Terminal Server, Cluster Server

 Citrix XenApp 7.

Software availability

The HP Designjet Universal Print Driver version is available in the following languages:

3 Plan an HP Designjet UPD deployment

This chapter is designed to help you make strategic deployment decisions as you integrate the HP DJ UPD into your printing environment. The deployment of the HP DJ UPD is unique based upon your specific objectives and current IT infrastructure. This chapter assumes that you have a basic understanding of the functionality of print drivers and the Windows printing architecture. This chapter also provides the options and recommendations to customize deployment based on your current printing environment and printing goals and objectives. Although your environment will vary slightly from the installation models below, you should be able to use the recommendations in this document so that deployment will be smooth and have the least impact to your printing environment. In some cases you will use more than one solution provided in the information below.

The five steps to a successful deployment

 Initiation and planning

• Fully understand your printing requirements and environment
• Make decisions

 Communication and training

• Executive sponsorship
• Training

 Conducting a pilot

 Test and evaluation

 Roll out to production

Initiation and planning

To gain the maximum benefit from the HP DJ UPD, it is important to:

● Fully understand your printing requirements and environment.

● Develop an HP DJ UPD deployment strategy.

An HP DJ UPD deployment needs to be considered similar to any other major change to your IT environment, and should be treated accordingly. Back up print servers and print queues before beginning an installation.

Understand your printing requirements and environment

Determine deployment objectives

Description of the deployment objectives. The intent is to get a clear and detailed picture of what the end result will be after the migration or upgrade.

Print servers or Direct IP

HP DJ UPD supports both client-server printing and direct IP printing.

For additional information on whether direct IP printing is right for you please refer to Direct IP Printing with the HP Universal Print Driver available on www.hp.com.

Identify stakeholders

The stakeholders are anybody impacted by the plan. Stakeholders can include, but are not limited to, the following groups.

● End users – Will there be downtime, what will change?

● IT staff – How much time and resources?

● Help Desk – What do they need to know?

Make an inventory

Make an inventory of all printing products, print servers, print queue names, printer drivers, IP addresses, and printer languages that you are using. If you have print servers, you also need to determine if all of the print queues are still active.

Driver considerations

Please consider the following to determine if the HP DJ UPD is the correct solution for your printing environment.

● The HP DJ UPD is supported and tested on HP printers only. For non-HP products, HP recommends using the driver supplied by the product manufacturer. ● Not all HP printers are supported by the HP DJ UPD. The HP DJ UPD supports a wide range of Designjet printers and MFPs. To obtain the latest list of HP DJ UPD supported products, visit the following website: www.hp.com/go/designjetupd

Environment and network compatibility

Validate that the HP DJ UPD is compatible with your current environment and network communication protocols. Make sure that the SNMP and mDNS protocols are not filtered or blocked. The HP DJ UPD requires these protocols for product discovery and communication.

Baseline the system

Test that all printing applications are compatible with the HP DJ UPD. Run performance and printing tests using “typical” documents.

The amount of time it will take to install the HP DJ UPD depends on a number of factors including the number of drivers, the number of print queues on the server, and the number of host clients receiving the installation. Typically, the installation of any driver only takes a minute or two, but this can be significantly slower if there are other printer drivers on the system. Creating a print queue using an existing driver typically takes only 30-60 seconds depending on processor speed, etc. However, if you have 100 print queues to create, this could easily add up to almost 2 hours.

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832219 - Users cannot print after installing a service pack, updating rollup, or a printer hot fix on a server.

Communication and training

HP strongly suggests having a communication plan in place prior to beginning your deployment of the HP DJ UPD. This helps overcome objections and ease the fears of end-users who might be worried about losing some of their printing functionality. Make sure your end-users and the IT staff members understand the benefits gained by using the HP DJ UPD.

Training

Develop training reference materials and identify resources to help end-users successfully transition to the HP DJ UPD from standard product drivers. Include information about how to identify products through the HP DJ UPD. Employ a survey to gauge customer satisfaction.

Conducting a pilot

HP recommends the creation of a test-environment during HP DJ UPD implementation. Select a part of your printing environment that will not affect too many users to test the implementation prior to deployment to the entire printing environment. Make sure this test environment (applications and printers) is representative of the overall printing environment.

Deploy to production

HP strongly recommends a phased approach to deploying the HP DJ UPD.

Deploying in a phased manner across the IT environments helps to:

● Minimize issues and provide valuable information about each type of environment.

● Uncover issues that could be documented and considered prior to the next phase.

● Increase the confidence of end-users and sponsors in the project.

● Confirm work is done adhering to requirements

● Gain formal acceptance of the product

● Hand off completed product

4 Installing and Uninstalling the HP Designjet UPD

The HP DJ UPD can only be installed in Traditional mode. During installation, the driver is associated with a specific printer, creating a permanent instance of the driver. Even though the printer is created as a permanent instance, you can modify the current model from Printer Properties -> Device Settings.

Supported Modifications of the Hewlett-Packard Designjet Universal Print

Driver

 The HP DJ UPD must be installed exactly as it was received from HP, with no modifications.  The HP DJ UPD may be installed using the HP-supplied scripts (Visual Basic or Power Shell technology) or using a Microsoft recommended and HP-approved tool and/or process listed in HP DJ UPD installation methods.

 Modifying any HP DJ UPD driver files (INF, MSI ,etc.), making registry edits after installation, or manually copying or deleting files, except when explicitly instructed to do so by HP in writing, will result in an unsupported configuration.  HP DJ UPD should be deleted using only Microsoft-supplied tools and procedures. Manual deleting of registry entries and/or driver files is not recommended and not supported. See Uninstall the HP UPD for more information.

Determine the HP DJ UPD version installed

To determine if a version of the HP UPD is already installed, open the Printers folders using one of the following methods:

Command Line : From a command prompt ( Start>Run , type cmd, press enter) type the following command to open the Printers folder: control printers.

User Interface : Dependent upon operating system version: ● Windows 7: Click the Start button, and then select Devices and Printers. ● Windows Server 2008R2: Click the Start button, and then select Devices and Printers. Select the printer, right mouse click, and then select either Properties or Printer Properties , select the About tab. The UPD version is displayed at the top.

Microsoft Windows Driver Architecture

HP DJ UPD v1.0 Install/Upgrade

The HP Designjet Universal Print Driver (HP DJ UPD) is dependent on the Microsoft Windows Unidriver (unidrv.dll) architecture. The HP DJ UPD release notes provide the unidrv.dll version used by HP for internal testing, and subsequently qualified by Microsoft’s WHQL test process. The Microsoft WHQL certification gives the HP DJ UPD the “Certified for Windows” logotype. The HP DJ UPD is supported by HP for all versions releases of unidrv.dll that remain under Microsoft’s standard support. It is the expectation that Microsoft’s updates to unidrv.dll will be backward compatible in support of the Microsoft Windows universal print driver architecture. Any unexpected behavior resulting from the dependency on the Microsoft unidrv.dll requiring code change to the HP DJ UPD would become a candidate for fix in the next release of the HP DJ UPD, and/or investigated with Microsoft, as required. The HP DJ UPD installer is one of several possible distribution mechanisms for the shared unidrv.dll and pscript5.dll files. HP DJ UPD v1.0 includes updated versions of the unidrv.dll and pscript5.dll compared to prior releases. The HP DJ UPD installation package may update the unidrv.dll and pscript5.dll as necessary during installation. Before installation, it is advised to review Microsoft's KB832219, KB944733, KB829766 articles and the HP DJ UPD System Administrator's Guide. Enterprise environments that have a Unidrv.dll version older than the version packaged in the HP DJ UPD may experience the symptoms defined in the Microsoft articles. Administrators should identify the unidrv.dll or pscript5.dll version installed on the target host's

kSharing : sets if the printer is shared or not kVerbosity: sets the message verbosity level while installing kDriverSubfolder: sets the subfolder name inside the script installation path where the inf and the driver binary files are located. This setting is used when the second argument is not present while calling the script kPort: sets the port. This setting is used as a port when the script is called with zero arguments. TCP/IP ports (both IP or Hostaddress) as well as local ports are supported

Calling the script with zero arguments

When the script is executed without any argument, both the port and the driver path are read from the config.cfg file.

Example: C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs

Calling the script with one argument

When calling the script with one argument, you can either pass a Printer Name (hostname), IP Address or a local port path. The script will create a port with name HPDSJUPDPort_XXX where XXX is the argument passed.

Example: C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs 16.23.12. Or C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs HP_T1500_B2_corridor Or C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs c:\myfolder\myfile.prn

Calling the script with two arguments

When calling the script with two arguments, the first one will be the port (IP/Hostname/localport), and the second one will be the path from where the driver will be installed.

Example:

C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs 16.23.12.15 c:\DJ_UPD_HPGL2_driver Or C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs HP_T1500_B2_corridor c:\DJ_UPD_PS3_driver Or C:\script>cscript HP_DJ_UPD_install.vbs c:\myfolder\myfile.prn c:\DJ_UPD_PS3_driver

Explanation of driver name

During a new driver installation, or when changing the driver version for an existing installed HP DJ UPD printer, two choices exist for the HP DJ UPD. Selecting either option installs the same version of the driver offering the same set of capabilities.

Figure 4-2 Driver names in the Add Printer Wizard

Following installation, based on the selection, the driver name of the HP DJ UPD printer will be either the version specific or non-version specific HP DJ UPD.

HP Universal Print Driver name selection

The first option, "HP Designjet Universal Printing", referred to as the non-version specific HP DJ UPD, will install or upgrade all printers using the HP DJ UPD to the driver version being installed. For example, if HP DJ UPD v5.0 is installed on the system as "HP Designjet Universal Printing HPGL2" and the administrator installs the HP DJ UPD v5.1 selecting the non-version HP DJ UPD during installation, every printer using the driver name "HP Designjet Universal Printing HPGL2" will be upgraded.

The second option, "HP Designjet Universal Printing(vX.Y)", referred as the version specific HP DJ UPD, creates a version specific driver name instance of the HP DJ UPD. Selecting a version specific driver name of the HP UPD does not upgrade HP DJ UPD's printers that have a different driver version assigned to the printer. This allows a print server to have multiple driver versions of the HP DJ UPD on a single system. For example, the following driver names could all be on the same host: ● HP Designjet Universal Printing HPGL2 (v5.1) ● HP Designjet Universal Printing HPGL2 (v5.0) ● HP Designjet Universal Printing PS3 (v4.7) ● HP Designjet Universal Printing PS ● HP Designjet Universal Printing PS3 (v4.8)

Some Upgrade Examples:

Example 1:

installation default of "HP Designjet Universal Printing [PDL]" or "HP Designjet Universal Printing [PDL] (vX.Y)" will be applied. If a printer with the default name exists on the system, "(Copy 1)" will be appended to the HP Designjet UPD default name. ● After installation, the printer name can be viewed or changed in the Printer's folder by selecting the printer and right mouse clicking Printer Properties. The Name field is located at the top of the General tab.

Benefit of HP DJ UPD version name installation : For shared printers (i.e. print servers) HP recommends implementation of the version specific driver name. The version specific model selection during HP DJ UPD installation allows control over the upgrade and migration strategies. Multiple versions of the HP DJ UPD could exist on the same system. For example v4.7, v5.0 and v5.1 could all co- exist on the same system assuming each was installed choosing the version specific driver name. This benefit allows customers to upgrade drivers for newly released HP devices without having to re-test or re-certify legacy devices for every new release of the driver. For instance, assume a print server has 100 existing printers installed all using the 5.0 version of HP Designjet Universal Printing HP-GL/2. Further, assume that new HP Designjet printers have been purchased and only support v5.1 of the HP DJ UPD. The administrator can create new printers using the HP DJ UPD v5.1 version specific installation without affecting existing printers that use a previous version of the HP Designjet Universal Print Driver.

Driver upgrade steps

This section assumes the reader has an understanding of the following: ● Microsoft Windows driver architecture ● HP DJ UPD supported upgrades ● HP DJ UPD installation methods ● Explanation of driver name ● Best practice-upgrade

Settings retention : The settings retained during an upgrade are dependent upon how the driver was first installed. If the Printer was installed with the non-version specific HP DJ UPD, driver settings will be retained during the upgrade. If the printer was installed with the version specific HP DJ UPD, some settings may not be retained during the upgrade. Those settings not retained will assume the defaults of the newly installed driver.

Upgrade Steps : HP recommends the following steps to upgrade the HP DJ UPD on print servers. These steps complete a sequence of events to ensure the administrator’s personal print settings are not applied to the printer during the driver version upgrade. The settings applied become the default settings of the shared printer and Point and Print clients, and all file changes as a result of driver upgrade are completely registered to the system. The steps are not scriptable using supported methods, and are dependent upon environment size; this should be accounted for in project planning.

After upgrading the system to a new driver version, it is recommended to reboot the system to force replacement of locked files shared by the Microsoft print system.

Assign the newly installed driver version to the existing HP DJ UPD printers.

 Example steps provided: From the Printers folder, select Printer Properties for the HP DJ UPD printer, and click the Advanced tab. Change the driver to the newly installed HP DJ UPD version. For example, if the printer name is currently set to "Corridor 2- Marketing Dept", change the Driver selection to "HP DJ Universal Printing HP-GL/2 (v5.1)" to and click OK to assign the printer name to the new driver version.  Figure 5-3 Assign newly installed driver to existing HP DJ UPD printers

Uninstall the HP UPD

HP recommends using Microsoft operating system utilities to remove the HP Designjet Universal Print Driver from the Microsoft Windows operating system. This is the safest method to uninstall print drivers. HP does not recommend manually editing the Windows Registry or manually deleting driver files. This can destabilize the printing environment and is not supported.

HP recommends the following procedure to remove the HP DJ UPD:

1. Delete all printers that use the HP DJ UPD. 2. In the Devices and Printers folder, select any printer, and then click Print Server Properties. 3. From the Server Properties window, select the Drivers tab. 4. Select the HP DJ UPD driver(s) to be uninstalled, and click Remove.

NOTE: If Windows displays an error message that the driver is in use; stop and restart the print spooler using one of the following methods:

▲ From a command prompt, type “net stop spooler”and then press Enter to stop the print spooler. Type “net start spooler” and then press Enter to restart the print spooler. -or- Open the Services applet in Control Panel (Start-Run-services.msc), select Print Spooler , and then click Restart. Once the print spooler has been restarted, repeat the steps above to remove the print driver.

Case 2.

Versioned driver update : when a new driver supporting a new printer model is released, the user can install the new driver for the new printer without being forced to change the old driver being used by previous printers

Update Current Printer Model functionality

Current Model is a functionality that you can find in the Printer Properties UI, in the Device Settings tab:

The motivation behind this functionality is that some IT administrators prepare their IT infrastructure even before unpacking the printers. To do that, they install the driver in the server and the final user computers. When the printers are ready and reachable through the network, they set the printer port to the IP address or Hostname of the device, and select the Update Now option from the combo box, and then click on the OK or Apply buttons: