Printer deployment best practices

[Nuno Santos]

Hello.

I Have installed a new server 2008 as a Primary domain controller.
The rest of the servers are 2003 server and all the clients are windows XP
professional.

I'm trying to deploy printers to the users with group policy.
Each user will have only the printers that are defined in the policy.

What is the best way to perform this?

1-Install the printer in this PDC, go to print management and deploy the
printer to the correspondent policy?
2-Directly create a rule in the policy "user
configuration-->preferences-->Printer"

Both options are not working very well.
With the second option i can install some printers, others are not installed.

I don´t know if i was clear , but if there is any aditional question please
fell free to ask.

Nuno Santos

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

Re: Printer deployment best practices

the printer does not need to be installed on the DC. Since I only test
printing and not AD stuff, I do not have access to a DC anyway and have not
used it as a print server.

I assume you installed the Print Server Role on the DC if you are using it
to share a printer. I will also assume since your clients are x86 (32bit),
the Domain Controller is also x86.


If in fact the machine sharing the printer is x64, you must install the x86
printer driver with the exact same name on the x64 server.

I know the Preferences stuff requires a client binary but I do not know what
it's called since this is not a printing feature.


If you have the print tools installed on the DC just use Group Policy
Management Console to add printers to the policy for Deployed printers. For
this feature, the XP clients need to run pushprinterconnections.exe (the x86
version) for the addition and removal of the connections.

Stick with per user printers unless you have class room like environments.
--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Nuno Santos" <NunoSantos@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B7F4CC4A-F24C-4359-B60D-2E019FA79039@microsoft.com...
> Hello.
>
> I Have installed a new server 2008 as a Primary domain controller.
> The rest of the servers are 2003 server and all the clients are windows XP
> professional.
>
> I'm trying to deploy printers to the users with group policy.
> Each user will have only the printers that are defined in the policy.
>
> What is the best way to perform this?
>
> 1-Install the printer in this PDC, go to print management and deploy the
> printer to the correspondent policy?
> 2-Directly create a rule in the policy "user
> configuration-->preferences-->Printer"
>
> Both options are not working very well.
> With the second option i can install some printers, others are not
> installed.
>
> I don´t know if i was clear , but if there is any aditional question
> please
> fell free to ask.
>
> Nuno Santos
>