Audit / monitor shared network printer

Hello *.

I have a Windows xp professional SP2 running on one computer with a shared printer attached. The user "Guest" or the group "everybody" has full access to it. I'm living in a student community where every person in the local network can print on this shared printer.
What I want is to audit or monitor who prints what on my printer, e.g. i want to know the computers network-name or IP and the number of pages as well as the print date&time, so that if someone prints a lot on my printer when i'm away i can see this later.

In the micrsoft-knowledge base I found an article where i can audit my printer, but this function doesnt show me the wanted information, it only shows my computers name and the username guest along with the time/date.

My question is: do you know how to supervise or audit my shared printer with computer name, number of pages or some other print-job intformation?
any help i s appreciated.

schuessi

Average: 4 (1 vote)

PrintWatch

PrintWatch seems to do what i need. It can track the computer name, uses mc-access or ms-sql-db and runs as service, so it runs always. i can also insert paper/duplex/color costs and they are grouped by user or computer or group or...

question answered, thank you all

Sounds good

Good luck with the software. If you find the time, please report here how well it works.

Hans-Georg

i have to admit i never

i have to admit i never googled for it.
thanks for this little hint.
atm i'm testing o&k print watch as shareware. I'll post a comment about my experiences.

thanks so far
schuessi

Third-party software

A step-by-step description on how to set up printer auditing is here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: How to audit user access of files, folders, and printers in Windows XP

But Windows' own auditing cannot provide all the information you want. If users connect to the printer as guests, which is the usual way, then the print server may not even know who is printing.

So you will probably have to resort to third-party software. If anybody else knows one particular program that works well, please chime in.

Hans-Georg

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