Printers losing connections...

[mrbios]

Having a bit of an issue with printers, it's very all over the shop at the moment, 75% work first time with no problems but the rest will have random intermittent issues, all users are using the same mandatory profile so it can't be that...

I'm using group policy preferences to push out my printers, the other printers policies i have set are:
Point and print restrictions - "do not show warning or elevation prompt" is set
Execute print drivers in isolated process is enabled
Override print driver execution compatibility setting - disabled
Allow print spooler to accept client connections - enabled

Is there anything else i should be setting?

What happens at the user end is user logs on, can go into devices and printers and see the mapped printer (but it won't be set as the default! and any attempt to change it to default doesn't work!) If that user then attempts to print a document, when they get to the printer selection screen clicking the desired printer just flicks back to whatever else is there instead. What i've found fixes it is removing the printer, restarting the print spooler then readding it, but that's not good enough in the long run!

Any advice?

[NorthernNoel]

I've been having a lot of problems with Printers. To let you know where i'm at: I've set the printer to connect via a login script. This improved login speed and they were more reliable at connecting. I've also found that any printers with PCL6 drivers were intermittant. Changing to a PCL5 driver seems to have cured that.

[mrbios]

Last night noticed the driver i was using was made in mid 2008, found a new version from november 2009, so far it doesn't appear to have fixed the problem but im going to give it a few weeks to let all the PCs install the new version happily

Drivers im using are UFRII canon drivers, i may try the PCL5 drivers if there are any

[InspireICT]

Did anyone find a solution to this, I'm having this problem now.

[mrbios]

It's a problem i've found has settled itself over time, but it still crops up on a weekly basis on the odd machine and it's VERY annoying as nothing i've tried has worked

Worst part about this problem is that only very few people seem to have this problem

[ChrisMiles]

I've had this problem as well, I believe its particularly bad with HP printer drivers. I tried every way possible of deploying printers including login scripts and group policy but still random printers would either not install at all or would be broken in the way you describe. In the end I had to write some software which runs while the user is logged in that removes and re adds printers each time a user logs in and then makes sure they stay correctly configured.

We have replaced all our HP printers with Samsung now and it doesn't happen any more.

There was a Microsoft kb article somewhere stating incompatibility with server 2008 and hp printer drivers but maybe other brands were also affected.

[Homer]

We're in the same boat. We have been persevering with GP printer deployment since September but my patience has run out now, Excel rarely works with it, our Finance Department's Accounting package doesn't like it, Outlook hates it, there are all kinds of issues surrounding it.

Quite often it happens to the students too. I have reverted one office + it's staff back to using a login script (which any of you can have if you want, we found it here, does printers, network drives etc) and it seems to have resolved issues in that room.

I'm also pretty certain that it has been bogging down our login times quite significantly... not to mention I've never liked it!

Does anybody have issue with setting a local printer as well when you have deployed printers using GP? If a member of staff attempts to set a printer as default (even a locally connected one), Windows says that the printer could not be set as default and to see if it is connected?!

Long and short, group policy sucks for printers.