Printing argh!!!!

[plexer]

Have just started the wholesale deployment of Win7 and yes you've guessed it printers are giving me grief.

 

I've deployed Win 7 Enterpise x64 to my clients.

 

The print server is 2008 R2 with x64 drivers installed for the printers.

 

I've made the changes to point and print restrictions, actually disabled it, as per suggestions for both the user and computer configurations.

 

I've set up a GPP targetted to Windows 7 and Windows Multipoint to "update" with a list of printers, I've made the change so that they are applied under the current user context instead of system.

 

Log on to a windows 7 machine and they don't apply but if I go through add a printer and type in the shared path to the printer it works fine.

 

Ben

[Michael]

Are your drivers up-to-date? You could try deploying printers via GPO instead of GPP.

[plexer]

Yup they were all recently installed.

 

GPP should work though

 

Ben

[Michael]

You could check the event logs (on the local workstation). This should give you a clue.

[witch]

GPP should work, yes, but I had so many issues with it that I went back to other methods Edited August 13, 2012 by witch

[plexer]

You could check the event logs (on the local workstation). This should give you a clue.

 

Nothing in the logs that jumps out to point to an issue, group policy events all fine.

 

Ben

[Domino]

For GPP the printers need to be listed in the directory, is it set on yours?

[plexer]

No they weren't I think that may have solved it gpupdate on a client and the expected printers appeared.

 

Will test some more tomorrow I'm going home.

 

Ben

[AngryTechnician]

GPP is still buggy as hell, even in SP2; my advice is always to apply the latest GPP hotfix as you get all the cumulative fixes since SP2 (and there are a lot).

 

The one I have installed and works is this one: You experience a long domain logon time in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 after you deploy Group Policy preferences to the computer

 

I think the latest though is this one, and has fixes for printer issues that look familiar so I'll probably roll it out myself soon: Group Policy Preferences stops responding when you try to configure printers that use third-party drivers in Windows Server 2008

[Jobos]

The one I have installed and works is this one: You experience a long domain logon time in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 after you deploy Group Policy preferences to the computer

 

What is classed as a long logon time and how much quicker are your loggings now you have the update installed?

 

With win7 I'm struggling to get the login time below 42 seconds with mandatory profiles.

[AngryTechnician]

What is classed as a long logon time and how much quicker are your loggings now you have the update installed?

I didn't install the update to solve any slow login problems - we weren't affected by that particular issue. I installed it to get the other cumulative fixes in GPP. It isn't the Microsoft-recommended way to go about things, but until they release a new official cumulative update for GPP, that's what I do.

 

There are a lot of reasons login could be slow besides Group Policy Preferences. Do you have verbose logon messages enabled to see which bit is slow?

[Soulfish]

At my last place we had GPP working great. Set it up on a brand new infrastructure here last year in exactly the same way and it's been buggy as hell all year and can take 15-20 seconds to apply just the GPP printer settings. In the end I went back to good old fashioned VBS login scripts which have worked flawlessly and are lightning quick.

 

I did try and debug some of our issues, and certainly found others on technet experiencing similar things but unfortunately didn't have enough time to spend tweaking and playing so went for the quick fix. I still use GPP for other things, and it seems to work fine for them (shortcut or file deployment, drive mappings, registry changes etc) just printers that seem to give me grief!

[Duke5A]

I'm still using VB scripts for printer deployment as well. All of our machines are tightly named and organized in AD so I have the login script hand out printers based on name and computer object LDAP paths. It works so well I don't really see a reason to replace it.

[mac_shinobi]

I'm still using VB scripts for printer deployment as well. All of our machines are tightly named and organized in AD so I have the login script hand out printers based on name and computer object LDAP paths. It works so well I don't really see a reason to replace it.

 

The whole if it aint broke dont fix it scenario

 

Would be good to see the script if that is ok

[Stuart_C]

If I could set the default printer by PC GPP would be fantastic, it's looking a pain if I have to use item level targetting to deploy to the users.

 

Not truely convinced by GPP.

[Domino]

If I could set the default printer by PC GPP would be fantastic, it's looking a pain if I have to use item level targetting to deploy to the users.

 

Not truely convinced by GPP.

 

You can! set the item level targeting to set the default printer by OU, then use loopback processing to apply the user settings to a computer OU.

 

It's what I do...

[Michael]

There was an old trick I used in XP and in theory it should work in Windows 7.

 

Deploy the printer using GPO, then logon to the workstation. Set the printer as default, then navigate to:

 

HKCU > Software > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > Windows

 

You just need to make a note of the Device entry and its Value data, then deploy with GPP. I also find removing other 'standard' printers again using GPP can help, such as Windows's own fax and Office's printer too.

[Duke5A]

The whole if it aint broke dont fix it scenario

 

Would be good to see the script if that is ok

 

@mac_shinobi

 

Sure thing! I plucked out the relevant parts from our log on script and pieced it together into a self contained sample script. I hope it proves useful.

 

VB Script for network printer deployment - Blogs - EduGeek.net