Windows Server 2008r2 Printer Sharing over vlan

Question

Hi folks,
I have a Windows Server 2008r2 set up as my workstation and I'd like to share the printer with 4 new macs. I've set up Printing Services on WS2008r2 and enabled IPP, LPD and everything else I could think of.
The printer sharing works, our other laptop which is Win7 can use it normally, but setting up the share on a Mac is a whole new kettle of fish.
I couldn't get it to connect via IPP, Mac keeps insisting on port 631 even though IPP is running on port 80 here. I have no idea what to put into the address field, if I copy/paste the URL the Mac doesn't recognise it. If I just put in the server name it's happy but insists on connecting to port 631.
Next came LPD which seems to work, Mac connects to the server and picks up the printer. Which brings me to the next problem. If I use standard generic postscript driver then nothing happens, printer gets switched on on the server and stops. An event log entry reports an LPD error:
"The Line Printer Daemon (LPD) service received commands in an invalid format from 172.16.8.106 and refused the print job. This can occur if the Line Printer Remote (LPR) client is incompatible with the Windows LPD service and Request for Comments (RFC) 1179. Try printing using a different LPR client."
The printer is a Brother hl-6050D/DN series. If I switch the printer options from generic postscript to a Brother printer it will print but it only uses about 60% of the space, so everything is shrunk on the page. It does print the full content of the page, just makes everything smaller. I managed to get this far by selecting one of the BJC (Bubblejet) models from the drop-down list.
I've installed Brother's driver for 5060D/DN from their site but it's not available anywhere on the Mac. How do I tell the Mac to use a different driver?
I feel I'm getting close to fixing this, but now the problem is in Macland and I'm not too familiar with it.
Anyone got any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated!+
Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm going to apologize first because I don't have a real solution and my post will sound negative, but my experience may give some insight.
My experience is that Apple didn't get Windows printing "done right" until 10.5. Prior to that, I could never print to a Canon S800 printer attached to a Vista Ultimate machine. With the printer attached to a XP machine, I could print, but it would often fail. (Just no output and OSX saying printer was offline.) This was with a G3 B&W with 10.3 and a iMac with 10.4. And like you, I did try the IPP and LPD settings but just never got a usable setup.
Then I got a Macbook Pro with 10.5. Printing worked fine straight out of the box to the same S800 printer on Vista. Mac Mini with 10.5 worked also. Upgraded both to 10.6 and printing still works. Even a clean reload of 10.6 on the Macbook, Windows printing is fine. Also to a Epson R280 attached to the same Vista machine.
Windows 2008, having more in common with Vista and Win7, I'd guess that you may be having similar issues to me. I don't know of any fix, other than 10.5. If you have a friend with a newer Mac, then you can test it. (Otherwise, if you can upgrade your Mac to 10.5 or 10.6. But testing with a friend's Mac would save the cost of buying an OSX upgrade if it didn't work.)
Like I said, no real solution, other than possibly upgrading to 10.5/10.6. So maybe just a pointer to a different line of thinking. Good luck!