Deploying Printers

[just_david]

I'm Looking at updating how we deploy our printers.

 

We currently use a group policy to push the printers during user logon as a user preference

It's okay. It gets the Job done but does slow down the login a little, as the computers have to install the drivers every logon.

 

I'd like the printers to deploy during startup as a computer preference

However this way doesn't seem to install the drivers along with the printers.

Is there a way around this? Or do I have to find a way to deploy the drivers separately?

[adamholt1]

Have you looked at doing a group policy item targeting?

 

1 policy, keeps things nice and tidy that way too.

[just_david]

Thats what we have, 1 group policy with item level targeting.

Its working slows logon.

 

Trying the same, 1 policy with item level targeting but during computer startup doesn't pick up drivers.

If the PC already has the drivers it works correctly, though i just noticed the set as default printer option is greyed out >.<

 

edit:

Here's the error from log viewer

The computer '10.6.183.41' preference item in the 'Client: Printer Settings (testing) {50D8D3D0-2D9B-4C9A-A474-CC961B6340E5}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x80070bcb The specified printer driver was not found on the system and needs to be downloaded.' This error was suppressed.

 

Isn't this supposed to pull the drivers down from the print server?

Edited August 19, 2016 by just_david

[free780]

You can enable gpp logging via group policy. It usually helps. I found install the printer driver with SCCM during imaging speeds up the deploying printer part of the logon.

[just_david]

I'm not sure what gp logs to use, or what they would show?

 

For whatever reason the computers are just determined not to pick up the drivers from the server. (even though the older GPO works just fine)

[just_david]

one last post...

Huzzah, found the problem.

 

There were some settings based in another GPO (that had nothing to do with printing >.<) for some reason that we're conflicting. all rolled up now into one nice and clear gpo and its all working

[Duke5A]

We moved printer deployment last year to GPP from VBS. I also noticed initial printer installation taking forever to install the drivers and this was really a pain because we use Deep Freeze on our student computers. Solution was to pre-install the printer drivers (exact same ones that are on the printer server) into the base image.

[TechMonkey]

one last post...

Huzzah, found the problem.

 

There were some settings based in another GPO (that had nothing to do with printing >.<) for some reason that we're conflicting. all rolled up now into one nice and clear gpo and its all working

@davidcvs Do you remember what that GPO and settings was? Might be useful to take a look as we sometimes have issues with printers deploying.

[just_david]

it was the computer config > policies > admin templates> package point and print settings.

 

for some reason those settings weren't in our printing settings gp, but a default settings gpo.

so when i created them in our printer settings gp it conflicted and broke.