Migrating print drivers from Server 2003 to Server 2008

[DLW13]

Hi,

We are moving are print server from a 32bit Windows Server 2003 (Server15) to a 64bit Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server164V).

We have over 100 printers.

We want to start a fresh with the print server settings etc, but would like to retain the drivers we currently have. Is there a way of copying the drivers from old to new?

Thanks!

[SYNACK]

You may have issues with that due to the platform switch, surely you don't have 100 different types of printer each requireing a different driver though?

If it was a 32bit to 32bit move you could use the printer migration toolkit but it will get antsy at trying to use 32 bit drivers on the new platform.

[DLW13]

Thanks for the reply SYNACK.

Yes, sorry didn't take that into consideration, we probably have between 10-20 different printer types.

I was however, under the impression that 32bit printer drivers will work without problem on a 64bit print server?

The reason we've gone for 64bit was because we will be gradually moving over to Windows 7 64bit (Windows 7 32bit first)

[SYNACK]

I may have found something, if you can spin up a Vista machine you may be able to do this:
Migrate Print Servers
Print Migration Tool

Basicly you migrate from your server onto a 32bit version of Vista Pro or above then make sure that you have x64 drivers installed as well for dual platform support. You should then be able to migrate from that onto a x64 Server 2008 R2 machine. Its a bit more difficult as there is such a gap between the OSs and Vista was the bridge. You could probably use a copy of Server 2008 x32 as well and as long as you could get the media as it would take less than 30 days to do the migration and you get 30 days worth of trial.

[SYNACK]

Thanks for the reply SYNACK.

Yes, sorry didn't take that into consideration, we probably have between 10-20 different printer types.

I was however, under the impression that 32bit printer drivers will work without problem on a 64bit print server?

The reason we've gone for 64bit was because we will be gradually moving over to Windows 7 64bit (Windows 7 32bit first)

You can host 32bit drivers on the printserver fine but the printserver needs x64 drivers for itself to be able to print to them and be able to submit the jobs. The drivers must also be the same version as the printer settings files must be interpreted the same by both platforms.

If you don't already have x64 drivers installed for sharing on your 2003 server of the same versions then you may need to upgrade the drivers to the latest versions so you can get matching 32 and 64 bit versions. The other thing to take into account is that older drivers are oftern very unstable on Vista/7 so if you have any newer 32 bit machines running these the older drivers do have a habbit of crashing the print spooler all of the time.

It is best to use the latest drivers for the systems so that you don't experience the nasty spooler crash hell that will almost always occour with older drivers. You should be able to upgrade to the latest drivers and even share out the x64 ones from your current server that will actually make it copatible for printing from your newer hosts where the printers are now and then look at migrating with the latest drivers.

[Stuart_C]

Not had quite that many printers but having done what your doing you really need to get downloading! You need the 64bit drivers to install them in the first place on the server.

Takes time but at least you then have all the updated drivers

[SnaiL]

Hi, I tried to migrate from win server 2003 to 2008R2, got around 30 printers, but only manage to migrate 16 some is due to the driver some not.
Example. I have 5 canon IR3235 from server 2003, but only manage to migrate 2 printer to server 2008R2, What might be the problem ?

2nd question is with OKI driver, There is no setup.exe or install.exe on the driver ? how do i install them ?

Sorry, im a new graduate and a trainee in IT

[SYNACK]

2003 is 32bit and 2008r2 is 64bit so the migration path is much more difficult, you may be able to migrate them if the 2003 server also has the 64bit drivers installed. I would suggest upgrading all the printer drivers on the old server to the latest versions and adding the 64bit drivers also to give it a chance.

To install using just the driver add the printer manually and use the have disk button when prompted for a driver:
How to install a local printer | Windows Vista, XP and Windows 7 Tutorials
you will need to have exctracted/unzipped the downloaded file first though.

[Firefox]

We had over 3000 printers that needed migrating, and the easiest option by far was implementing Windows 2008 32bit print servers. As you can imagine having that many printers, we have a large number that don't even have a 64bit driver :-(

It's not ideal, but we plan to look at this again in the future when we have everyone on Windows 7 and we can "lose" the unsupported printers :-D

[fiza]

Just to get this straight in my head.

We have 7 different printer makes/models but over 80 different logical printers.
We have 2 x Server 2003 32 bit Print Servers. Each one has about 40 logical printers (split student and staff printers). These printers have 32bit drivers.

We are moving over to 2008 R2 : so to be able to migrate successfully we need to first ensure that we add 64bit drivers to our current servers and then attempt the migration?

[edutech4schools]

Did you sort this? I am just about to do the same thing.
Did you add 64bit driver first and then migrate or start over fresh on the new server?

[garethedmondson]

No answer - shame. We are about to look into this as well. Going from a 2003r2 server to a 2008R2 server. I think I am going to back it all up and then upgrade all 32 bit drivers before adding all the 64bit drivers.

Then I shall use the migration tool - which doesn't mention 2008R2. Maybe I have the wrong page. I'm looking at V3.1 - is there a newer version?

Gareth

[SYNACK]

No answer - shame. We are about to look into this as well. Going from a 2003r2 server to a 2008R2 server. I think I am going to back it all up and then upgrade all 32 bit drivers before adding all the 64bit drivers.

Then I shall use the migration tool - which doesn't mention 2008R2. Maybe I have the wrong page. I'm looking at V3.1 - is there a newer version?

Gareth

Tell us if it works, as far as I was aware there was no direct migration path and it relied on an intermediary step of 2008/vista 32bit first.

[Michael]

There is a direct path, here goes

On your 2003 print server, you need to add all of the x64 drivers along with the existing x86 drivers. Please note they must be the same version, so it's a good opportunity also to upgrade drivers.

To migrate printers from 2003 to 2003, you needed to download the Print Migrator 3.1. This is the important bit! If you try to migrate from 2003 to 2008 using the Print Migrator 3.1 it will fail.

Server 2008/2008 R2 (within Print Management) has its own built in printer migrator. Providing there's the x86 and x64 drivers installed already on the 2003 print server, the migration will be successful. Hope this helps!