Printing deployment chaos

[Sonic007]

Hi everyone,

 

So next week I have new printers coming and I’m fearing I’m going to be faced with Wibdows10 update printing problems.

 

I’ve already seen our latest updated windows machines not picking up the user printer GPO’s.

 

Can someone point me through the best and easiest way to get my printers installed where I won’t face any problems such as the admin rights needed for driver install.

 

I used to have printers set via user configuration GPO. Would assigning to computer work instead? I’ve heard mixed into.

 

Do I need to go down the changing administration reg settings and can I do this in a GPO? Or does each machine need doing individually ?

I read something about point and print restrictions.

 

We don’t use any print management software. Just all printers accessible to all. What’s the best way to do this?

 

If anyone has a step by step it would be very much appreciated.

 

Thankyou very much.

[Rob_D]

Group policy wise, I've had the most reliable results using User>Preferences>Control Panel>Printers (we currently have this as a loopback policy to apply to computers).

Or if you're up for using startup/login scripts, Con2PRT has always been pretty rock solid although I've not used with Win10.

[Sonic007]

Group policy wise, I've had the most reliable results using User>Preferences>Control Panel>Printers (we currently have this as a loopback policy to apply to computers).

Or if you're up for using startup/login scripts, Con2PRT has always been pretty rock solid although I've not used with Win10.

 

Yes, this is what I used to have, deployed to the user. But the lates tWindows updates break this.

I wondered if deploying to machine instead helped or if there is a better option.

 

I was looking at this:

https://rdr-it.com/en/troubleshooting/kb5005033-allow-non-administrators-to-install-printer-drivers/

Edited November 18, 2022 by Sonic007

[Rob_D]

We've not noticed this problem (yet), and use loopback processing to deploy the policy against computers rather than users. It's worth a try.

[Sonic007]

I've got my printers currently via User config, Policies, Deployed Printers.

 

From what I read online it works if done via Preferences instead of policies and then Control Pnael, and Printers. Ayone can confirm that?

 

Thankyou.

[Sonic007]

Thinking about it.... If printers areinstalled to machine so computer based GPO, if I login as an admin, it should install the drivers, and then be fine for everyone else right?

[Sonic007]

Just a quick bump... Does the above seem like it would work. Login as admin, this will let me pull the drivers down, then it is sorted for all other users?

Thankyou.

[Oaktech]

Just a quick bump... Does the above seem like it would work. Login as admin, this will let me pull the drivers down, then it is sorted for all other users?

Thankyou.

 

Can you just deploy the drivers as a software package as though you'd visited the machine and installed them - I had some tricky HP drivers that wouldn't pull down from the server even before MS messed with stuff, I scripted the install of them with a silent switch on the install EXE and they've been good as gold ever since.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

We've not noticed this problem (yet), and use loopback processing to deploy the policy against computers rather than users. It's worth a try.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]67171[/ATTACH]

 

We have it set up like this but it only works every other logon. So it'll work perfectly once, then on the next logon it won't work at all and users get Microsoft PDF printer, and then the logon after that it will work again.

 

And we do have the "Always wait for network" option set in another GPO.

[Sonic007]

With all the issues, I've ended up manually adding the printer for the time being. PITA but got me sorted quicker in the end.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

With all the issues, I've ended up manually adding the printer for the time being. PITA but got me sorted quicker in the end.

Sadly this is not a viable solution for us, I was hoping someone might have seen this issue and come up with a solution that doesn't involve buying third party software to map the printers.

[FN-GM]

We've not noticed this problem (yet), and use loopback processing to deploy the policy against computers rather than users. It's worth a try.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]67171[/ATTACH]

 

Personally I would use a WMI and target the computers that way. Loop back has caused headaches in the past.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

Personally I would use a WMI and target the computers that way. Loop back has caused headaches in the past.

 

I haven't tried a user policy with item-level targeting, I'll try that now.

 

EDIT: no that doesn't work either, same problem as before, we only get the correct set of printers every other login.

Edited December 5, 2022 by LRSFC_DanJ