Printers from old print server still appearing

[Olliedawg]

Decommissioned our old 2008 print server about a month or two ago & I am still seeing group policy attempting to apply the old printers via GPO... ( old printers named \\server-pri1\printer-name )

 

I cannot see where it is pulling these from. I set the printer paths within the GPO's to "Delete" all of the old printers, which has indeed made them disappear from the printer list that the user see's. Although group policy is still attempting to map them, seemingly from somewhere else? which is increasing login times by around a minute while it waits to time out, not ideal but not too bad either.

 

I've checked default domain policy to be sure - nothing in there to do with printers.

 

If i create a brand new OU, with a New user the printers do not attempt to apply.

 

Have I missed something with removing the old printers/decommissioning the previous print server? Unfortunately I no longer have access to the old print server, so am only able to see what's on group policy.

 

 

 

[Miscbrah]

Morning - I could be missing something on this one, but if I'm reading this right then that's just a group policy set to deploy certain printers. It doesn't itself "know" that there's no server called e.g. "OLDPRINTSERVER" it just does what it's told. Mostly lol!

 

So if that's the case, can you just remove those entries from the policy?

 

I'm guessing you deploy printers through Prefs now also from the above, that right?

 

Let me know if I've got the wrong end of the stick there.

[Olliedawg]

Morning - I could be missing something on this one, but if I'm reading this right then that's just a group policy set to deploy certain printers. It doesn't itself "know" that there's no server called e.g. "OLDPRINTSERVER" it just does what it's told. Mostly lol!

 

So if that's the case, can you just remove those entries from the policy?

 

I'm guessing you deploy printers through Prefs now also from the above, that right?

 

Let me know if I've got the wrong end of the stick there.

Thanks for the response, you are correct, the printers were deployed this way previously across multiple GPO's. I will try completely remove them from the policy & see if it makes any difference. I would have thought that leaving them set to "Delete" would have been fine.. Thing is, i'm not sure if they were also applied via Print Mgmt > Deployed printers on the old server. hopefully not, as i do not have access anymore!

[bald_pig]

Thanks for the response, you are correct, the printers were deployed this way previously across multiple GPO's. I will try completely remove them from the policy & see if it makes any difference. I would have thought that leaving them set to "Delete" would have been fine.. Thing is, i'm not sure if they were also applied via Print Mgmt > Deployed printers on the old server. hopefully not, as i do not have access anymore!

 

Have you run rsop or gpresult on one of the affected machines to see if there's still a policy trying to deploy these printers?

[Mako]

@Miscbrah is right, this is just GP applying to your users/workstations. Remove the offending items from the GPO, or disable the GPO if all it does is map printers.

 

But just to add further - if you're still having issues, you can run a GP Result from GPMC to see exactly what GPOs (and there subsequent settings) are applying to your workstation, then you can find the offending GPO and obliterate it modify it .

 

Edit:

Thanks for the response, you are correct, the printers were deployed this way previously across multiple GPO's. I will try completely remove them from the policy & see if it makes any difference. I would have thought that leaving them set to "Delete" would have been fine.. Thing is, i'm not sure if they were also applied via Print Mgmt > Deployed printers on the old server. hopefully not, as i do not have access anymore!

 

All that does it inject the printer mapping to a GPO, so running a GP Result will find the printer.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Mako

[Olliedawg]

I have just removed printers from the admin_ict policy, ran gpupdate /force & then rebooted + gpresult on my machine.

 

It is still trying to add these printers in via user configuration of admin_ict GPO. The printers are listed as being in these locations on the gpresult, although I can confirm that they are definitely not present in the GPO when I edit the settings.

 

: User config > policies > windows settings > Printer connections

: User config > Preferences > Control panel settings > Printers

 

The only printers i have listed to be applied now are are the two new virtual FollowMe queues on our new print server.

[Mako]

Try another reboot and another gpresult. Without knowing the setup of your estate, it's possible that the workstation is connected to a DC that hadn't received the updated GPO yet.

[Olliedawg]

Try another reboot and another gpresult. Without knowing the setup of your estate, it's possible that the workstation is connected to a DC that hadn't received the updated GPO yet.

 

I'll leave it another hour to ensure policies have replicated across all DC's & then give it a go (fingers crossed)