Printer Deployed via GPO Not applying on all machines

[Darylrese]

Hi guys,

 

We have a print server with all our printers installed. For each IT room we have allocated a printer via GPO.

 

We did this by creating a blank GPO on the DC, right clicking the printer on the print server, deploy with Group Policy, browse for the blank GPO we created and select Per Machine.

 

We then linked the GPO to each room's OU and most PC's have picked it up. However in each room we have about 5 PC's that don't show the printer. No matter who logs onto that PC, no-one gets the printer without manually adding it from the directory. Sometimes its not in the directory and wont let you add it as it already thinks its allocted but doesnt show in the printers list.

 

A gpresult /h reports the printer policy applied to the machine fine, yet it doesnt show.

 

Any ideas? Can a printer be allocated differently per machine which has a better success rate?

Edited April 23, 2013 by Darylrese

[bainer]

Hi Darylrese,

You could create a couple of batch files using PrintUI as below. Use the GPOs you've created to have this script run at machine startup. This should do the trick.

Enjoy

 

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\printserver\Single_Sided_B&W"

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\printserver\Double_Sided_B&W"

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\printserver\Single_Sided_Colour"

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\printserver\Double_Sided_Colour"

net stop spooler

net start spooler

[Darylrese]

Great, thank-you.

 

Do I just create a .bat file for the above and run it as a startup script?

[penfold]

Check these machines don't have a corrupt driver installed on them. I've had a similar problem that the printer constantly tries to install but fails as it thinks the driver is already installed on the client and then fails as the driver doesn't work. If you remove the driver on the client and then re-try (and check it works) it may clear the problem. I've had this primarily with Kyocera KX drivers but have updated these to Universal ones.

[Darylrese]

Script seems to have worked on my machine to allocate a printer, thank-you!

 

Hopefully it will resolve the issue with machines missing the printers too!