1703 and Group Policy Preferences printer mapping

[Katy]

Has anybody experienced this problem (and found a solution)? We have a printers GPO which sets up shared printer connections based on item level targeting (computer group membership). In the library it's supposed to get four printers, let's say A (Default), B, C and D. They all map every time however Windows is randomly selecting one of A-D to be the default printer. If I do a gpresult it shows the error 0x80070709 for mapping printer A ("The printer name is invalid") however the printer still maps, just not as default.

 

A google brings up some old posts about it trying to set the default printer before the registry keys for the printer connections have actually happened, although these were from about 2014 so hopefully that had been fixed (I don't remember having the problem with 1607 or 1511).

 

Any ideas on how to make it pick the default printer it's been told to pick? Don't want to have to revert back to logon scripts and the like

 

The GPPs are set as Update, does anyone know if it should be one of the others to be more reliable (Create/Update/Replace, obviously not Delete)?

[Arthur]

They all map every time however Windows is randomly selecting one of A-D to be the default printer.

You may need to enable the Turn off Windows default printer management GPO.

[Katy]

You may need to enable the Turn off Windows default printer management GPO.

Forgot to say, that's already been done.

 

I'm going to assume that this https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2787598/group-policy-printer-preferences-fails-to-set-the-default-printer-when hasn't been fixed yet and just try a registry preference to create a keyt in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Devices with the printer details, it seems to map the 1st printer in the GPP order list as port "Ne00:" every time so that's okay. Hopefully it runs this before it tries to set the default, then actually succeeds.

 

Unfortunately the 6pm auto shutdown means there's no classroom PCs for me to test it on from home so will have to give it a go in the morning.

[Katy]

I think I have managed to get my default printer to work properly, ended up doing a registry GPP entry with item level targetting for the computers wanting the global default (followme pin release system):

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows with a string key for Device which should be ,winspool, - however I found if you skip the port (which changes based on the random order it maps printers) it STILL WORKS

 

Hooray I won. Me: 1, Win 10: 0