When printing to Canon drivers, the print job owner name is SYSTEM

“Help! When users print through Mobility Print or Universal Print the job owner is “SYSTEM” instead of the actual username. Why does this happen and how can we fix it?”

Set ‘Spooling at Host’ to ‘Disabled’

We’ve heard of this happening with very specific drivers (in particular the Canon Generic PCL6 driver and Canon PostScript driver). When these drivers are used in conjunction with Mobility Print, the print job owner is SYSTEM instead of the correct user account. Fortunately we know of a simple workaround which requires changing the settings of the driver.

Here are the steps to take:

1. On the Print Server where the print queue exists, right-click the print queue and select Printer Properties.
2. Go to the Device Settings tab.
3. You’ll see a setting called Spooling at Host. Set this to Disabled.

This will allow us to track the print jobs under the correct username.

We have seen this happen for at least the following features when Canon drivers are in use.

• PaperCut Mobility Print
• PaperCut’s Connector for Microsoft Universal Print

It has also been reported that the Spooling at Host setting can cause problems for Web Print. With Spooling at Host enabled, our Print Provider may lose track of Web Print jobs intermittently, with affected jobs showing with status Failed: Timed Out. We suspect this is due to the driver re-spooling a Web Print job whilst the Print Provider is in the midst of analysing the associated spool file, which then appears to the Print Provider as though the spool file has been deleted or cancelled in the print queue.

If you don’t see the ‘Spooling at Host’ setting

Depending on the exact driver you’re using, you may not see the Spooling at Host setting.

We have had some customers who have had luck changing their configuration profile in the driver, to a manually selected profile instead. Note that it’s definitely worth testing that the selected profile on the driver works with all your print finishing needs before doing this in production.

1. In the Device settings tab, select Change… next to the configuration profile.
2. Choose Select manually.
3. Choose whichever profile is most suitable for the printer in question (see your manufacturer documentation if in doubt).
4. Apply the changes, and then ensure that Spooling at Host is set to Disabled.

Note: ignore the warning message - this was due to the printer being switched off at the time of the change!

Want to learn more about Mobility Print? Check out the Mobility Print Help Center.