print driver woes

[sted]

ever since replacing a server at one school with a new one i have had nothing but problems with printers. I gave up doing them from the 2012r2 box as 2012 seems to be a pita for printers and shoved them on the 2008r2 admin server. But whats happening is that pcs seem to be picking up some old drivers from somewhere that dont work with the printer. I can fix it by running a script that strips all drivers from a pc and it will reinstall the correct ones but them randmomly pretty much every pc will get the old driver back from somewhere. Its not installed anywhere as far as i can tell ive removed it from teh print server and the new server just incase. Printers deployed via gpp (loopback policy so applying user settings on a pc basis)

 

any ideas as best ive come up with is i got it running my printer removal script at shutdown which isnt ideal as it also removes any other printers from them so xps/pdf/teachers home printer

[colinged]

Hi Sted,

 

I've recently experience many print driver woes with 2008 r2 and HP printers however our problems don't quite seem the same but maybe they are. Could you explain how you know they are "old drivers" - I only ask as in our setup the drivers at first appeared fine and then when the random print issues occurred it was found that when going to the preferences menu of the printer driver that was installed you received very limited options (only two tabs) - is this what is happening to you? Is everyone stopped printing at the same time? Does it print at all?

Until there's further info I can only suggest possibly a GPO preference for printers with the option to "Replace" which is a bit of a harsh setting (people that didn't have this mapped before would then get it) however it would not remove the home printers / pdf which would be a good thing.

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

[sted]

the driver looks totally different when you go to preferences the old one has naff all options and dosent allow the printing code to be in-putted so printing fails

[MatthewL]

Not Sharp drivers are they by any chance?

 

Is so I suspect you have downloaded the universal driver as it is the one at the top of the list. If it is Sharp let me know your machine model and I will link you to the correct drivers.

[sted]

Not Sharp drivers are they by any chance?

 

Is so I suspect you have downloaded the universal driver as it is the one at the top of the list. If it is Sharp let me know your machine model and I will link you to the correct drivers.

 

nope toshiba but iirc it is a universal tosh cdriver but thats what the lease company told me to use

[colinged]

Our issue was with HP P4014 printers using PCL Drivers but your issue sounds very similar - Driver appears to go to a basic mode (two tabs within printer preferences which from memory were only Layout and Paper/Quality). Removing printer and reinstalling from share worked temporarily...

 

What I would have liked to have looked into if the issue was still current:printing fails when you use a shared printer in Windows 7 Print jobs fail in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

 

Event Viewer / Applications and Services Logs / Microsoft / Windows / PrintService, Right click "Operational" and Enable Log then check log when attempting a print.

 

SNMP enable / disable within printer

 

If I could have had time I would have liked to have completely removed all printers with the problem driver, completely removed all signs of the print driver within the server and reinstalled. Ultimately our issue was resolved by changing to the HP Universal PCL6 5.8 Driver however this seemed to bring in different issues with conflicts resulting in preferences changing to Mid Weight / Heavy A4. This was eventually stamped out by enabling a GPO Preference for printers that were set to "Replace".

[colinged]

Hi Sted,

 

just an update that Print jobs fail in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the problem with our setup...dependent files reg key overwritten and nothing in it (Null) - when this occurs the driver goes into a very basic mode within print preferences (two tabs). Will be applying this to a couple of computers for a trial period.

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

[sted]

Hi Sted,

 

just an update that Print jobs fail in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the problem with our setup...dependent files reg key overwritten and nothing in it (Null) - when this occurs the driver goes into a very basic mode within print preferences (two tabs). Will be applying this to a couple of computers for a trial period.

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

 

have you been reading my mind? I just found that same thing this morning and have requested the hotfix and deployed it to a pc that last week lost print access at least once possibly twice

[colinged]

have you been reading my mind? I just found that same thing this morning and have requested the hotfix and deployed it to a pc that last week lost print access at least once possibly twice

 

Haha - Spooky! I'll update you if I receive the same issue however I don't seem to have a particular machine that loses it often (some may work for weeks before stopping again). If it doesn't cause any obvious adverse effects then I'll deploy it out to a batch of computers and see what happens

 

good luck and let us know if it works!

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

[sted]

Haha - Spooky! I'll update you if I receive the same issue however I don't seem to have a particular machine that loses it often (some may work for weeks before stopping again). If it doesn't cause any obvious adverse effects then I'll deploy it out to a batch of computers and see what happens

 

good luck and let us know if it works!

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

oh theres no pattern some pcs (including the one I patched) have worked for months no issue then twice in a week it so random which makes it frustrating to say the least

[sted]

Haha - Spooky! I'll update you if I receive the same issue however I don't seem to have a particular machine that loses it often (some may work for weeks before stopping again). If it doesn't cause any obvious adverse effects then I'll deploy it out to a batch of computers and see what happens

 

good luck and let us know if it works!

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

 

well on my too small to be a guide sample it seems to of worked so ive rolled the patch out to suite and library pcs se if it works on a bigger scale. @colinged you had any joy with it?