It's a kid problem. Said kid has no restraint where the use of the printer is concerned.

I wanted to restrict her account to prohibit the use of all printers, yet it seems that MS doesn't make this possible.

This happens to be on a Vista Home Premium machine.

Under Windows XP Pro, I have a "Security" tab on the printer Properties page. It might not be available under Home versions. If it is, I bet you might have to change how users log in. I have very little Vista experience, but a lot of things go away in XP if you enable the Welcome screen.

The Security tab. Would it be there only for local printers?

Nope. It's there on remote printers. It's actually not there for the locally connected printer I have. Weird.

Could you set up a machine profile for that account that has all the printer drivers removed?

pca

There's always low tech... lock up the printer cable (or its ink cartridges or its toner cartridge).

If it's a printer that has network capability, you could change it so that it's a network printer and then password protect it from the printer's control panel.

As others have said, on the business version of Vista, there are very clear security settings in the printer control panel. That's kind of ironic, since I can see your situation needing the security more frequently than a business needs it. Most businesses don't want security on their printers, so that visiting dignitaries don't have problems when they visit.

Does your kid have admin access? If not you can disable the print spooler, this should prevent windows from printing.

this might be off the wall, but I seem to remember some kind of check box under the properties of any given device in the device manager. perhaps you could disable the printer or it's port under a specific user's account?

or you could be sneaky and add an A / B switch (:

Items and settings in the device manager are system-global and not tied to a user account, unfortunately.

I like the suggestion of disabling the print spooler service. That's also system-global, but only an administrator could turn it back on again. Would be a bit of a pain for every time the adults wanted to print something though.

You could also use Local/Group Policy to restrict the child's printing, IF they have their own login account that's not administrator. You can "restrict times/days user is allowed to print" to simply no days and no times.

Disabling spooler for just that user (via startup script? check the 'sc' command line for stopping services) is probably the easiest way.

Or, make them use their allowance to buy their own printer, ink and paper. They can save up for a $50 printer, but they couldn't afford to pay $20/cart for ink!

Not wishing to derail a perfectly good technical discussion, but how old is this kid? What's wrong with "your sorry ass is grounded if you print things without asking mum or dad first"?

Peter

Whats wrong with taking the paper out of the printer :P

Not on Home editions of Windows, you can't...

The moral of this story is, never buy the cheapest version of Windows and if you ever meet a member of Microsoft's marketing department, give them a good hard kick

It's simple - get Linux.




Printing is such a bugger that if she figures it out and starts wasting paper you'll be grateful

Next, introduce her to MP3 but remove the audio drivers. All this problem solving will make her a Linux goddess in no time.

Wait, hang on. You're right about Group Policy, but didn't the home version of Vista come with some kind of parental control feature that allowed you to restrict when the kid was able to do certain things, like they're not allowed to play games when they're supposed to be doing their homework, or they're only allowed to play games for a limited number of hours each day?

Or am I remembering that wrong? Or is that feature in SP1 (which is only at the RC stage at the moment)?

Anyway, I wonder if there's an extension to that feature that includes printer control.

The feature is described here, it says you can restrict certain programs, I don't know if printing is one of those things.

I checked the parental controls on my copy of Vista Ultimate RTM, and printing doesn't appear to be one of those things. I don't know whether SP1 will include that, but I doubt it. This page certainly doesn't say anything about it.

A quick check seems to show a similar issue in OS X. I can set an account to not have the ability to administer printers, but there is no way to prevent that account from printing to an already set up printer via the GUI.

I guess the people making parental controls were only really thinking about blocking naughty web sites and such and not normal local operations.

The annoying thing is that the functionality needed is all there in Windows, it is just that the Microsoft marketing department decided it should be removed from the home versions

The kid does have her own login and it it a limited account.

This local/group policy thing sounds promising.