I want to print from my personal PC to my House laser printer. How do I set this up?

FAQ Categories: Printing, Windows (Microsoft)

All HUIT printers in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) are available over the network, allowing you to print to any of these printers from a House wired network. Once you have set up your printers, you may also print from the wireless network as long as you use the VPN. Harvard charges users for printing to its network printers. The charges are collected using a software system called PaperCut. Before you print you should log into PaperCut and add funds to your budget. Go here to see more details about printing charges and PaperCut.

Change in organization of printers

From Saturday September 24th, 2011, printers in the PaperCut system will be divided across two new print servers, in order to improve performance and reliability of the system. If you only print to one printer, such as in your House, you will only need to set up one print server shortcut (see below). If you print to two printers in different locations, it is possible that you will have to set up two print server shortcuts. Refer to the list of printer locations to determine which of the two print servers hosts the printers you want to print to.

Recreate your printers and shortcuts

Important: If you had previously installed House or Lab printers, or set up any shortcuts to print servers (before Saturday September 24th, 2011) you should remove them after this date as they will no longer work. You must recreate your shortcuts and install printers as detailed below before you can print.

Adding a Laser Printer to your PC

Before you can print to a printer in a Science Center or House lab, you need to set up the individual printer you wish to use in the Windows Printers folder. You only need to do this once, before the first time you print to a particular lab or House printer.

Adding a Harvard network printer on a computer using Windows XP:

  1. In your web browser, visit the List of printer locations to determine which of the two print servers hosts the printers you want to print to.
  2. Go to the Windows Start Menu, and click Run.
  3. In the Run box, type the name of the print server for your printer that you determined in step 1 above, preceded by two backslashes (\\) and followed by .ad.fas.harvard.edu, and click OK. For example to connect to the print server FAS-PRINT-1 you would type \\FAS-PRINT-1.ad.fas.harvard.edu.
  4. Windows will prompt you to log in to the FAS Windows domain before you can proceed
    • In User Name enter FAS_DOMAIN\ followed by your user name
    • In Password enter your FAS password.
  5. A window will open showing the printers hosted on this print server. Right-click on the printer you wish to install to open the context menu. From that menu click Connect.
  6. If your computer tells you that the printer driver needs to be installed, click Yes to install the driver.

Adding a Harvard network printer on a computer using Windows Vista:

Note: Other methods of installing a printer with Windows Vista similar to those for Windows XP and Windows 7 exist, but have been repeatedly found to be unreliable in the Harvard PaperCut environment. The instructions below, while somewhat cumbersome, will guarantee your successful installation of a Harvard printer.

  1. In your web browser, visit the List of printer locations to determine which of the two print servers hosts the printers you want to print to.
  2. Click the Windows Start Menu, and click Run.
  3. In the Run box, type the name of the print server for your printer that you determined in step 1 above, followed by .ad.fas.harvard.edu and click OK. For example to connect to the print server FAS-PRINT-1 you would type FAS-PRINT-1.ad.fas.harvard.edu.
  4. Windows will prompt you to log in to the FAS Windows domain before you can proceed
    • In User Name enter FAS_DOMAIN\ followed by your user name
    • In Password enter your FAS password.
  5. A window will open showing the printers hosted on this print server. Leave this window open as you will need to refer to it in the next steps.
  6. Click the Start Menu, then Control Panel.
  7. Click Printers > Add a new printer > Add a local printer > Choose Create a New Port and click Local Port on the dropdown menu.
  8. When you are prompted for the port name, enter the following, all on one line:
    • Two backslashes: \\
    • The name of the print server you connected to in steps 2-3 above e.g. fas-print-1.ad.fas.harvard.edu
    • A single backslash \
    • The name of the printer you wish to use as it appears in the window that was displayed in step 4 above e.g. ADAMS1
      In the example above the whole line would read \\fas-print-1.ad.fas.harvard.edu\ADAMS1
  9. You will be prompted to install a driver for the printer so that Windows will be able to communicate with it.
    • For the House printers, use the driver HP LaserJet 4350 PCL 5. (included in Vista?)
    • For black and white printers in the Science Center Lab B14, use the driver HP LaserJet 9050 PCL 5
    • For the color laser printer in the Science Center Lab B14, use the driver HP Color Laserjet 9500

Adding a Harvard network printer on a computer using Windows 7:

  1. In your web browser, visit the List of printer locations to determine which of the two print servers hosts the printers you want to print to.
  2. Click the Windows Start Menu
  3. In the Search box, type the name of the print server for your printer you determined in the first step above, preceded by two backslashes (\\) and followed by .ad.fas.harvard.edu, and press the Enter key. For example to connect to the print server FAS-PRINT-1 you would type \\FAS-PRINT-1.ad.fas.harvard.edu.
  4. Windows will prompt you to log in to the FAS Windows domain before you can proceed
    • In User Name enter FAS_DOMAIN\ followed by your user name
    • In Password enter your FAS password.
  5. A window will open showing the printers hosted on this print server.
  6. Right click on the printer you want to use to open the context menu. From that menu click Connect.
  7. If prompted click Install driver.

Setting up a shortcut to facilitate printing

Each time you restart your computer, you need to reconnect to the print server before you can print. The easiest way to do that is to create a shortcut on your desktop that you can double-click before printing.

  1. In your web browser, visit the List of printer locations to determine which of the two print servers hosts the printers you want to print to.
  2. Right click on your desktop, and select New, then Shortcut.
  3. In the Create Shortcut window, type the name of the print server for your printer as the location of the item, followed by .ad.fas.harvard.edu and click Next to continue.
  4. When prompted to name the shortcut, type the name of the print server, followed by the name of the printer. e.g. fas-print-1 - ADAMS1. Keep the name short so that Windows will display the whole of the name on the Desktop. HUIT asks that you retain the name of the print server in the name for information, should you need to open a support incident about printing or PaperCut.
  5. Click Finish to create the shortcut.
  6. If you print to another printer on a different print server, repeat the process above for the other print server. If you print to two different printers on the same print server there is no need to add more than one shortcut.

Installing the PaperCut balance client

The PaperCut client lets you see your printing balance in a window on your computer. You do not need it in order to print - it is merely a convenience. However if you had already installed the client, you will need to update it by installing the newest version or it will fail to connect to the new PaperCut service.

  1. From the Start menu choose Run (Windows XP, Windows Vista) or Search (Windows 7) and type
    \\fas-ppc.ad.fas.harvard.edu\PaperCut_PC_Install - then press Enter
  2. If you are asked for your username and password, enter your usual FAS Domain services password.
  3. A new window will open. Find the item in the window called client-local-install and double-click it
  4. Follow the installer program's instructions to set up the client on your PC. There is no good reason to change any of the options offered during the installation so use the Next button to move through the steps and click Install when it appears.
  5. At the end of the installation click Finish
  6. Close the window that opened in step 3 above.
  7. Go back to the Start menu and find PaperCut NG Client. Click this Start menu item.
  8. The balance client will open and display your current balance. If the program does not start, or the balance you see does not correspond to the balance shown on the PaperCut web page for your account, contact Support

Printing your documents using PaperCut

If you followed the steps above, you have now installed one or more network printers on your computer and created one or more shortcuts to their print servers. You are now ready to print using PaperCut.

  1. Double-click the shortcut you created above that relates to the print server hosting the printer you want to use.
  2. Windows will prompt you to log in to the FAS Windows domain before you can proceed
    • In User Name enter FAS_DOMAIN\ followed by your user name
    • In Password enter your FAS password.
    • Click OK to connect to the PaperCut system.
      NOTE: If you are not prompted for your FAS username and password, you are already connected to your printing account.
  3. The list of printers will open in a window on your screen. You can install a new printer if you wish, or you can close the window and start to print to the printers that you already installed.

Add money to your FAS printing budget

To add money to your FAS printing budget, open a web browser and go to the Harvard PaperCut site.

From this page, you can:

  • Add money to your FAS account with your credit card. Undergraduate and GSAS students can charge their termbill. To add money to your printing budget with Crimson Cash, see a User Assistant at the FAS Help Desk in the Science Center basement. See How do I add money to my FAS laser printing budget? for more information.
  • See your transaction history, including when money was added to and when print jobs were debited from your printing budget.
  • See your recent print jobs to all FAS IT networked printers.
  • Release a job from a print queue, if you are printing from a Linux workstation.
Last reviewed: 09/30/2011