Student machine receiving Printers not allocated in Group Policy

[daneil16]

Morning all,

 

We have recently deployed our new server 2012 network over the summer and everything is running perfectly! lol

 

No it's not that bad, a few gremlins but we are operational. One of the problems that is bothering me is printers.

 

I have installed all printers and photocopiers via the Print management snap-in, deployed the printers via Group Policy to computers that this GPO applies to (per machine) and allocated them to my computer room OU.

 

Printers and copiers all work find but for some reason, students in the computer rooms are seeing 6 or 7 printers appear even though they only have 1 allocated in Group Policy?

 

My OU structure is "Computer Rooms" with no printers linked, and inside this 5 Computer room OU's with a printer linked to each.

 

If anyone has had a similar problem or knows how to fix this any help would be great!

 

Thanks guys

[tmcd35]

We had a similar issue here. Student profiles were collecting printers as they moved between rooms. We found a script on the web which we run at logoff to delete all printers that way only those in the GPO are installed next time the login.

[synaesthesia]

Don't deploy using GPO or the print management interface - use GPP, it's far more reliable. Use Item Level Targetting so you have a single policy dealing with all the printers, map them to stations, groups or OU as you see fit.

[koryo]

Don't deploy using GPO or the print management interface - use GPP, it's far more reliable. Use Item Level Targetting so you have a single policy dealing with all the printers, map them to stations, groups or OU as you see fit.

 

+1 for this - we always found Group Policy Preference printers to be much more reliable and functional. I would suggest if your going to look into this though that you understand the differences between update and create/remove of the printers with GPP.

[Davit2005]

+1 for GPP .

 

At a previous employment they had roaming profiles and students were collecting printers. We changed to Mandatory profiles and went down the Print Management route.

 

However, my current employment I decided on the GPP method as you can nearly always get the Default printer set to what you want.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Davit2005

[daneil16]

Right thanks guys, I have changed over Printer to GPP allocated printers. Now working on finding a script that will delete all the printers currently stored in the students profiles. If anyone has a script/bat file handy, if not, now going to try and write my own. Thanks all

[Bento]

I've had the same issue this week with our Windows Server 2008 r2 and Windows 7 domain network.

 

We've recently had a new fleet of printers installed along with PaperCut to enable follow me printing and monitoring of how many prints were done (No monitoring at all beforehand).

 

We decided on going for a Staff Follow Me print queue and a Pupil Follow Me Queue. Set these up via Print Management -> Deployed printers and all was well for a week or two. Then we started getting random printers that weren't deployed to the user or machine. E.g. staff could see the Pupil Follow Me Queue and vice-versa.

 

Guess I should do the same then?

[daneil16]

Here's a great .vbs script to delete any network printers already stored in the profiles. We have just got papercut this year, not all features are set up, but it has already made it's money back in 3 months. Will be looking at follow me printing next summer when we have more time.

 

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Remove-All-Network-Printers-8b82b324

[Oaktech]

can you not just use a GPP hierachy to remove all printer connections and then recreate?

[Davit2005]

can you not just use a GPP hierachy to remove all printer connections and then recreate?

 

I noticed a bit of login delay when doing GPP for printers and then setting the policy to replace, not drastic and there is a bit on the internet about it causing a delay.

 

But it does remove the printers and reassign them, you can see this live if you do a gpupdate with 'Devices and Printers' window open.

[Bento]

I found out the problem with our setup here, seems someone has updated the default login profile (we don't have roaming or local profiles and force a static profile on all accounts) and that included a bunch of printers. Obviously then when users logged on these showed up in addition to the deployed ones.

 

Time to fix that profile!

[AlexB]

I found the remove and readd too slow. Ended up writing a vbs script that reads an ini file to assign printers based on OU.

 

1. It starts by not removing anything.

2. It goes through and tries to add each printer from the ini and records them in a list (If they are already added, it does nothing)

3. It then gets the list of installed network printers, compares it to the list made in 2 and removes the ones not in the list.

 

This way, most times, the script does nothing and users get their printers very quickly. On the rare occasions it needs to add or remove printers it only does the bare minimum.

[Davit2005]

Don't deploy using GPO or the print management interface - use GPP, it's far more reliable. Use Item Level Targetting so you have a single policy dealing with all the printers, map them to stations, groups or OU as you see fit.

 

Another method is to just assign the policy to OU's where the computers reside, I've found this quite a reliable way to enforce a Default Printer for the room but have a backup of a local printer that may be on a floor i.e.

 

Depending on your Active Directory OU Layout

> Workstations

> Floor 1 (mapped a corridor photo copier to all the rooms on this floor)

> ICT Room 1 (mapped a printer in this room as default)

[FreelanceX]

Just thought I would add my two cents to this.

 

Over the past year I have had to upgrade lots of schools from server 2003 and therefore completely redoing printer deployment. Tried lots of ways and I have now got it down to a way which works 100% of the time, with only an ever so slight delay during log in.

 

I use GPP to assign the printers, which have been added to the server through the devices and printers window.

 

I add the printers via the shared printer GPP option, to the room OU required, but via the user configuration.

 

I use the replace option, so it will guarantee the printer will be there each log in. This does add 3 or 4 seconds to the log in time, but that is negligible. I also tick the option to run the policy via the users security credentials.

 

In the same policy, I enable group policy loop back to merge, so the user policy will run when the user logs in, even though its not under the users OU.

 

To remove old printers, or local ones (one note, smart, fax etc), I just set them under the default domain policy to delete via GPP.

 

This way, every user only gets the printers they need, where they need them. No scripts required.

 

Just to note, I never use roaming profiles in my schools. I worked at a high school for many years and all they did was cause issues - Printers being the main one. Now whenever I take hold of a network, first thing I do is get rid of them - No printer issues!

 

Sorry if others above me already do the same, I didnt see anyone mention the user config under machine ou with loopback.

[machin05]

Just thought I would add my two cents to this.

 

Over the past year I have had to upgrade lots of schools from server 2003 and therefore completely redoing printer deployment. Tried lots of ways and I have now got it down to a way which works 100% of the time, with only an ever so slight delay during log in.

 

I use GPP to assign the printers, which have been added to the server through the devices and printers window.

 

I add the printers via the shared printer GPP option, to the room OU required, but via the user configuration.

 

I use the replace option, so it will guarantee the printer will be there each log in. This does add 3 or 4 seconds to the log in time, but that is negligible. I also tick the option to run the policy via the users security credentials.

 

In the same policy, I enable group policy loop back to merge, so the user policy will run when the user logs in, even though its not under the users OU.

 

To remove old printers, or local ones (one note, smart, fax etc), I just set them under the default domain policy to delete via GPP.

 

This way, every user only gets the printers they need, where they need them. No scripts required.

 

Just to note, I never use roaming profiles in my schools. I worked at a high school for many years and all they did was cause issues - Printers being the main one. Now whenever I take hold of a network, first thing I do is get rid of them - No printer issues!

 

Sorry if others above me already do the same, I didnt see anyone mention the user config under machine ou with loopback.

 

So you use Loopback instead of Item-level Targeting?

 

We've just changed from GPO per machine connections to GPP per-user with Item Level Targeting. We're getting loads of instances of no printers being added at all. Sometimes gpupdate and restart works, sometimes not. It seems to be randomly failing - different users, machines, wired, wifi etc.

 

Might give your config a go and see if that helps.

[Oaktech]

Just thought I would add my two cents to this.

 

Over the past year I have had to upgrade lots of schools from server 2003 and therefore completely redoing printer deployment. Tried lots of ways and I have now got it down to a way which works 100% of the time, with only an ever so slight delay during log in.

 

I use GPP to assign the printers, which have been added to the server through the devices and printers window.

 

I add the printers via the shared printer GPP option, to the room OU required, but via the user configuration.

 

I use the replace option, so it will guarantee the printer will be there each log in. This does add 3 or 4 seconds to the log in time, but that is negligible. I also tick the option to run the policy via the users security credentials.

 

In the same policy, I enable group policy loop back to merge, so the user policy will run when the user logs in, even though its not under the users OU.

 

To remove old printers, or local ones (one note, smart, fax etc), I just set them under the default domain policy to delete via GPP.

 

This way, every user only gets the printers they need, where they need them. No scripts required.

 

Just to note, I never use roaming profiles in my schools. I worked at a high school for many years and all they did was cause issues - Printers being the main one. Now whenever I take hold of a network, first thing I do is get rid of them - No printer issues!

 

Sorry if others above me already do the same, I didnt see anyone mention the user config under machine ou with loopback.

 

I gave a pretty short answer in my suggestion, but this ^^^ is exactly how I have configured my printer assignment.

[machin05]

Loopback instead of Item-level Targeting?

[Oaktech]

Yeah, loopback. It was the only practical way I could come up with of reliably assigning a set of printers to a room by OU.

[machin05]

Yeah, I thought that's what Item-level targeting was meant to do.

 

For example, I have a Staff Printing GPP policy in my staff OU and in there I add all the staff/office printers that we have via GPP. I then configure each printer to only apply if the member of staff is using a computer in a particular room(OU) using Item-Level Targeting.

 

Worked in testing but upon mass-rollout we are getting ad-hoc and sporadic errors. Well, not so much errors, just no printers being deployed. No pattern has emerged as yet so I'm tempted to re-deploy them all via loopback and see if that sorts things.

[PotNoodleTech]

I ended up deploying the printers with GPP but that combined with roaming student profiles ensured that printers ended up following pupils around wherever they went which was a week of nightmare. The tick boxes to remove this policy after it is applied did nothing, item level targeting did nothing. I ended up with a VB script to delete all network printers on log off. So now, every time a student logs off the script removes the printer (but not the drivers, importantly) then when they log on group policy adds the printer again but as the driver is already on the PC it takes literally 2 seconds.

 

This has worked solidly for well over a year. Have applied it to staff too.

 

heres the VBS script

 

Set wshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
on Error Resume Next

'Deletes all network printers
Set clPrinters = wshNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections
On Error Resume Next
For i = 0 to clPrinters.Count - 1 Step 2
wshNetwork.RemovePrinterConnection clPrinters.Item(i+1), true
Next 

Edited November 21, 2014 by PotNoodleTech