Printers disappearing having to restart spooler

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

We seem to be having a problem at the moment, where staff and students are logging in and the printer is not there and they have to install the printer. On other occasions mainly for the admin team we have to restart the print spooler to be able to re-install the printer.

 

This is not happening to everybody.

 

Printers are installed per room via GPO - User Config - Preferences - Control Panel Setting - Printers - Shared Printers.

 

I have tried updating the drivers for the printers but this has not helped.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Sean

[network41]

Which OS are the clients ?

[Theldron]

Windows 7 Pro

[network41]

OK You may well have already tried this but just in case:

Stop the spooler service if running

Go to C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3

Delete all the content

Restart the spooler

Add the printer back in and this should pull the appropriate driver from the Print Server

Worked for us few times ,so hope it helps

[Theldron]

Yeah thanks mate, but we have tried that.

[LeMarchand]

Are they printers or copiers? We had a problem where the Canon DIA service wasn't starting after the server rebooted.

[Theldron]

They're Toshiba MFP's 2040CSE.

[synaesthesia]

If they're per room, how come they're set up in user config? User profiles will probably be having a paddy on every logon with that.

[Theldron]

Too be honest it was setup in a rush over a summer. I had to setup the server and network quickly on my own and it was the only way I could do it with a shared printer. I hadnt really thought about it since till you said. Ill look at moving them across. Cheers

[Theldron]

How do other people deploy printers in Server 2008 r2?

[machin05]

Via Group Policy Objects using the Print Manager interface on the server. We do it per room with a separate OU and GPO for each room.

[Theldron]

At one point I found the print management quite unreliable. Thats why I ended up with per user. Ill try it now. Cheers

[machin05]

We went over to per User with Item Level Targetting using GPP. We had more instances of printers failing to install so we went back to GPOs. Not perfect, and the occasional reboot is required, but it's the best we can seem to do at the moment.

[synaesthesia]

GPP here, workstation level with item level targetting. Extremely rare for any printer related problems to happen, if they do it's because of a larger workstation related issue. Mandatory profiles for all staff and students which probably helps with that too.

[LeMarchand]

GPP here, workstation level with item level targetting. Extremely rare for any printer related problems to happen

 

Ditto.

[Theldron]

I have setup the printers per machine but getting the old issue of printers following people around. So if they print in room A then go to room B to print the room A printer will show up. Any help? Also what do you use the item level targeting on this for?

[LeMarchand]

I have setup the printers per machine but getting the old issue of printers following people around. So if they print in room A then go to room B to print the room A printer will show up. Any help? Also what do you use the item level targeting on this for?

 

Maybe you need to delete all shared printers at the beginning of the sequence?

 

The way I do it is detailed here.

 

I use item level to set printers or defaults to only certain OUs. I don't remember why I used "User" (may have been a mistake!) and @synaesthesia has pointed out it may cause problems - not had any, though.

[Theldron]

How do I do delete all printers at the start using Print Management? As I am still getting the printers following students. Cheers

[LeMarchand]

How do I do delete all printers at the start using Print Management? As I am still getting the printers following students. Cheers

 

Sorry - don't know (and a quick look didn't enlighten me!). I never had much luck with Print Management, which is why I switched to GPP for printer deployment.