Printers not appearing in Directory and vanishing from clients

[Little-Miss]

Right, I've installed the printers on the server. Shared them, added them to the list directory but yet when i do a search from my machine i get the "no printers available" message. When i press "The printer i want isnt listed" and click "Find a printer in directory" there they all are.

 

I've never managed printers with AD but have tried changing some settings to:

 

Allow printers to be published: Enabled

Allow pruning of published printers: Disabled

Check published state: Enabled, every 1 hour

Directory pruning interval: Disabled

Directory pruning priority: Disabled

Directory pruning retry: Disabled

Log directory pruning retry events: Disabled

Printer browsing: Enabled

Prune printers that are not automatically republished: Disabled

Allow print spooler to accept client connections: Enabled

 

I've bounced the print spool but doesnt seem to have helped. I seem to have gone from having a few printers listed but now there are none....

[Little-Miss]

this is one of those issues where everyone on the internet seems to have had the problem, but no one gives me an answer that works...*internal screaming*

[Little-Miss]

I notice that they're appearing in the Device and Printers pages of clients that are locked down....

 

41 read and no replies....

[mikkydoos]

Do they happen to be HP's by any chance. I've had this........

[Little-Miss]

nah, Kyocera..

[localzuk]

I have the exact same issue. Still have no idea what causes it. Just random printers refuse to appear in that list, so I have to enter then manually by path.

 

[/superhelpfulresponse]

[mikkydoos]

This is what I experienced .... (although mine were HP)

 

 

1. I used new drivers - PCL5 - HP had stopped supporting something AD-ish in the later versions of their drivers apparently that stopped them working (on a network printer!)

 

2. Perms on your GPO (are u installing per user or per computer? )

 

3. I've also had major dns issues with printers when I've either changed their name, new printer server or new IP. Is your path \\servername\sharedprinter or \\ipaddress\sharedprinter. Try changing them from one to the other & try deleting the dns host record for one of them and force dns to create a new one.

 

I seem to remember dns being the final solution.

[Little-Miss]

They seem to be filtering through after a reboot, but i will wait before i think its sorted. DNS did occur to me, the web interface has space for DNS server address so i've added them to one to test it out....

[SHimmer45]

policy being applied to computer or user if your publishing via GPO

[mikkydoos]

U have to put DNS address in the printer if using a static address otherwise they definately wont work

[Little-Miss]

Ok, things SEEM to be ok (see that Fate, i haven't said its sorted so don't get tempted)....apart from one user, but thats a whole different issue.

 

Interesting thing is i installed the 8 new PC's using the software that came with them, i've just reinstalled an older one by purely using the drivers on the server and that one is appearing in the add printer list....