Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Problem with Konica Minolta and Printing with Authentication on Mac OS X 10.10 in an Active Directory Domain Environment

I have a client who has a base of Macintosh OS X users, but they are all joined to the domain for printing and file sharing purposes. They also have apps that requires central authentication as well, as such, a domain environment is required.

The reported problem was simple:

"I am unable to save the Authentication Settings for the username and password for printing color print-out."

Upon inspection, I found out that the issue is that :


I spent 2-hrs over remote to help the user out. I checked the following:
  1. ensured key-chain access is removed and not saving any passwords
  2. login to different user profiles within the Mac to try, same problem
  3. added printer and re-add printer drivers, ensured that printer driver is the latest (5.2.1) for Mac OS-X for Konica Minolta Bizhub C364 (printer in mention)
  4. ensured that the LOCK is UNLOCK for all system settings
  5. verified that all users that i tried have admin access
  6. other printers do not have the same problem. I have 2 printers (one lexmark and the other konica minolta), but lexmark doesn't seem to have problems with saving authentication settings.
  7. I read the following sites:
    1. http://forumspain.net/thread/konica-minolta-authentication-account-track-greyed-out.html
    2. http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/printing-to-konica-minolta-bizhub-c360.1039526/
    3. http://manuals.konicaminolta.eu/bizhub-C554-C454-C364-C284-C224/EN/contents/id16-0030.html
    4. http://www.copytechnet.com/forums/konica-minolta/87457-authentication-greyed-out-printing-c224e-mac-os-10-9-a-2.html?s=347e833b6c02a4f2594008dbea88a541
    5. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2733341?tstart=0
    6. https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14453&p=67592
    7. https://computing.si.umich.edu/confluence/display/SIC/Authentication+-+Mac+OS+X+10.6+and+Before
  8. I also re-read the manual for installation... and it's found here: http://manuals.konicaminolta.eu/bizhub-C554e-C454e-C364e-C284e-C224e/EN/contents/id01-_101378675.html
  9. I made sure that I tested printing from Chrome, Safari, Ms Word, TextPad and all the issues were the same.  

 Note that in my situation, I have the following scenario:
  • this is the only MacBook that was unable to save the authentication details
  • everyone on PC and other Mac were able to print.
  • the printer is not showing any error, and job logs on the printer admin console shows that print-out are successful.
  • my domain environment is a Windows Server 2008r2 domain
  • Mac OS-X is 10.10.5 (Yosemite)
  • Make sure that it's Authentication and not Tracking that you are troubleshooting. There is a difference and details of the set-up can be found here

The solution:
  1. Remove printer driver
  2. Unjoin (unbind, that's what mac calls it) the macbook pro from the domain
  3. Restart the Mac
  4. Re-install printer driver (5.2.1 at this time of writing -  https://www.konicaminolta.com.au/downloads)
  5. Ensure that you can save the authentication settings
  6. Rejoin (re-bind) to the domain
  7. Restart the Mac
  8. Test print - it should work now....


Hope it saves you all time instead of having to spend 2-hours like me!!!