Disappearing Printers

[FN-GM]

Hello,

 

How are we getting on with the Disappearing printer issue please? Did anyone manage to fix this? There are a number of threads here and on the internet and I am struggling to come to a conclusion.

 

Thanks

[Liam]

After logon? Or not appearing as part of a logon process?

[grahamd22]

After everyother login the printer dissappears and management are NOT happy and neither am I ! Just added loopback but doesn't make any difference. It must be holding onto legacy profile data only the once and this gets wiped everytime a user restarts (they can't logoff, its by design). On initial logon the printer is not there, they restart, it is and then restart again it dissappears and so on, so frustrating.

[Liam]

Can’t say I have experienced it. But not a recent update? How are ou adding the printer? Script or group policy preferences?

[grahamd22]

Do you delete student profiles with no problems affecting printer installation?

 

We run a follow me print queue for staff with Papercut yet they have no issues but their profile isn't getting deleted as they have dedicated laptops.

 

We have tried with gpo which works everyother time, we have tried with a vbs script and the same results. I've added gpupdate to the users logon script.

[Liam]

Hm.. with the pattern being so consistent I would say it’s gpo. Try taking out the gpo that adds them and add the printer manually. Log on and off. Does it remain?

[grahamd22]

We don't allow the find printer option as this would increase wasted prints around site

[FN-GM]

It happens when a new profile is created. If the profile is already exists on the machine, it works just fine.

[Liam]

We don't allow the find printer option as this would increase wasted prints around site

 

Glad it’s not only me. But you can do it from picture viewer and then specify the path yourself.

[Liam]

Have you got something in the profiles? Perhaps a start menu with something in startup? Is it a mandatory one or just gets created locally? Trial and error I guess.

[forkies]

We used to have this issue and it was to do with driver deployment, I changed a setting in GPO and it worked for Window 7. However, I am getting this again after deploying Windows 10 (not sure what GPO I had applied but nothing seems to be working), the event log is giving me an error id 4089 with an "Invalid parameter" under the Application event log on the client as the user logs in. I will be working on this tomorrow and Friday so will post if I find any information.

 

Are you also getting event id 4089 on the client machine when the user logs in and the printer fails to deploy?

[FN-GM]

Have you got something in the profiles? Perhaps a start menu with something in startup? Is it a mandatory one or just gets created locally? Trial and error I guess.

 

Standard out of the box profile. Not modified etc. They are all local, not roaming, mandatory etc.

 

 

We used to have this issue and it was to do with driver deployment, I changed a setting in GPO and it worked for Window 7. However, I am getting this again after deploying Windows 10 (not sure what GPO I had applied but nothing seems to be working), the event log is giving me an error id 4089 with an "Invalid parameter" under the Application event log on the client as the user logs in. I will be working on this tomorrow and Friday so will post if I find any information.

 

Are you also getting event id 4089 on the client machine when the user logs in and the printer fails to deploy?

 

I will double check the event log.

[grahamd22]

Glad it’s not only me. But you can do it from picture viewer and then specify the path yourself.

 

Would you be able to explain further?

 

As we have been blocking the window titles with Impero I have now released Find Printers for students as a work around, which works for now until I can get this resolved.

 

We use mandatory profiles which get deleted upon restart. I've been trailling and it is certainly becuase we delete the profile because as FN-GM says if the profile exists it's fine?

[Liam]

I generaly leave profiles on the machine for 30 days. I found that most teachers have seating plans and it speeds things up for the kids.

 

Maybe this is why we do not experience anything?

 

its certainly a strange one though - and seemingly unique to your environment?

[Garacesh]

We're having it here, too. Printers just disappear. Sometimes there's entries in 'Unknown Devices' but they don't actually get recognised as a printer despite working $Yesterday.

 

Once a machine loses its network printers the only solution I've found is to reimage it. Once they're gone, they're gone. Kaput. Sayonara.

 

Only things I've thought of to try is restarting the spooler service, un/reinstalling the drivers, and deleting the profiles. Each gives me nada.

Oddly we're finding the same thing happens with USB external storage. A machine will just stop reading any and all expandable storage you attach until you reimage it and then it's all good again.

 

It's driving me up the wall and it's too sporadic to properly debug (and once it fails, it gets reimaged sharpish because staff need it so I don't get long to troubleshoot the machine)

 

All our staff are using local profiles. There's a few reg tweaks here-and-there but nothing major, it's just the standard profile Windows generates for a user in C:\Users when they first log on.

[Duke5A]

We're on LTSB 2016 here and I haven't seen this issue. How are you guys deploying printers? GPP? What is the print server running? After the printers disappear try both browsing to the server and adding the queue manually, and refreshing policy with a 'gpupdate /force'. Trying to add the printer by hand should bring up an error window if it fails. If it fails with GPP it will be placed in the Application log under Event Viewer.

[FN-GM]

We have LSTB 2016 clients.

Printer is deployed via print management to a group policy.

Print server is running Server 2016. It also happened when it ran 2012.

Manually adding works fine.

[Duke5A]

I've actually never used the feature to deploy printers through the print management snap-in. I tried it and it creates GPO and places the print queue in 'User Config > Windows Settings > Printer Connections'. This is a pretty old way of deploying printers.

 

Create another GPO and move a couple print queues into it using GPP. 'User Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers' I currently have 52 printers in this policy and it's attached to the root OU that houses the user accounts. I use Item Level Targeting on each print queue to further whittle down who gets what.

 

I can't begin to since enough praise for this method. Printer deployment is one of those things that just works. GPP is just one of those things that just works. All my Windows 7 and Windows 10 clients get their printers every single time.

[FN-GM]

I've actually never used the feature to deploy printers through the print management snap-in. I tried it and it creates GPO and places the print queue in 'User Config > Windows Settings > Printer Connections'. This is a pretty old way of deploying printers.

 

Create another GPO and move a couple print queues into it using GPP. 'User Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers' I currently have 52 printers in this policy and it's attached to the root OU that houses the user accounts. I use Item Level Targeting on each print queue to further whittle down who gets what.

 

I can't begin to since enough praise for this method. Printer deployment is one of those things that just works. GPP is just one of those things that just works. All my Windows 7 and Windows 10 clients get their printers every single time.

 

That isn't any good for us for 2 reasons

 

1. Don't want to deploying to all computers, this will happen if you do it per user.

2. Slows down the login speed, especially with MDF drivers.

[sparkeh]

That isn't any good for us for 2 reasons

 

1. Don't want to deploying to all computers, this will happen if you do it per user.

Whilst you can use machine gpps to deliver printers per machine you need to use the user gpps to set a default printer. We use user GPPs with loop back processing and item level targeting so printers are delivered per machine not per user. Never had a printer disappear with this.

[FN-GM]

Whilst you can use machine gpps to deliver printers per machine you need to use the user gpps to set a default printer. We use user GPPs with loop back processing and item level targeting so printers are delivered per machine not per user. Never had a printer disappear with this.

 

We could do that (or use targeting), but then take a hit on the login times.

[Duke5A]

That isn't any good for us for 2 reasons

 

1. Don't want to deploying to all computers, this will happen if you do it per user.

2. Slows down the login speed, especially with MDF drivers.

 

Number one is not an issue as Item Level Targeting can be done on OU location of the computer object as well. You really should look at the options available in it.

 

Number two is only an issue the first time a user logs with a printer that has never touched the machine before. Once the driver is installed it's persistent. This is really only an issue if you're utilizing something like Deep Freeze. Even then this is overcome by either pushing the driver out or building it into your images.

[forkies]

I've actually never used the feature to deploy printers through the print management snap-in. I tried it and it creates GPO and places the print queue in 'User Config > Windows Settings > Printer Connections'. This is a pretty old way of deploying printers.

 

Create another GPO and move a couple print queues into it using GPP. 'User Config > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers' I currently have 52 printers in this policy and it's attached to the root OU that houses the user accounts. I use Item Level Targeting on each print queue to further whittle down who gets what.

 

I can't begin to since enough praise for this method. Printer deployment is one of those things that just works. GPP is just one of those things that just works. All my Windows 7 and Windows 10 clients get their printers every single time.

 

This (GPP) is what I am using and the printers are disappearing, this is only happening on my new Windows 10 deployment, not any windows 7 clients. I am thinking either driver or gpo as the old gpos for Windows 7 are wmi only to Windows 7 so maybe I missed something on the new Windows 10 gpos I made.

[sparkeh]

We could do that (or use targeting), but then take a hit on the login times.

Only for the first user that logins and installs a new printer for that machine. Subsequent logins shouldn’t have an impact at all unless you add more printers with different drivers that need installing. If that is unacceptable for you, you could even install the driver before anyone logs in; depending on your imaging method you could bake it into the image or deliver during OSD.

 

Edit: basically what was posted above by @Duke5A but I didn’t read

Edited December 19, 2017 by sparkeh

[FN-GM]

Even when the machine does have a driver it still has a hit during login. Although it is a smaller impact.