GPP Printers and Romaing Profiles (again...)

[Arcolite]

Over the summer we rolled out Windows 7 x64 across the whoel site.

Overall everything has gone really well.

 

There's only one problem that seems to have me stumped at the moment.

 

Our GPP Printers were working lovely, but then our GPO containing these printers became corrupted without a backup available.

We recreated the GPO and copied all the printers over and it's working great but this has left our users with orphaned printers from the old GPO stuck in their profiles.

 

All the Printer queues are setup to "Remove when no longer applies" with Item Filtering matching the Machine name to the Departmental Printer.

For example, all machines starting MFL-* will get the MFL Photocopier etc...

But because the orphaned queues are from another GPO, GPP in the new Policy wont touch them.

 

To try and correct this I added a "Delete All Shared Printer Connections" as the first item.

This works, just not at every login. I've found that it applies in the second login.

 

If a Student logs in, notices he's got the wrong printers then logs off, then back on, GPP will sort itself out and remove all connections and apply the required ones.

 

Trying to resolve this I also turned on "Process even if the Group Policy objects have not changed" for Printer Preferences under the Computer GPO.

I had hoped this would "force" GPP to apply every login. No change.

 

My only alternative at the moment is to apply a logoff script to the Students GPO which removes all Shared Printer Connections.

However, so far our Windows 7 setup is 100% GPO/GPP. Ideally I would like to keep things that way and avoid scripts.

 

Any suggestions?

[sonofsanta]

Surely you'd only need the script on for a fortnight and then you could remove it again once all the old printers are cleared out? After that it'll all be neat and tidy again.

[Arcolite]

Surely you'd only need the script on for a fortnight and then you could remove it again once all the old printers are cleared out? After that it'll all be neat and tidy again.

 

Very true I guess. I'm just a bit OCD and precious about my new setup and hoping I'm missing something obvious.

[sonofsanta]

If it turns out you have, let me know - I'm trialling GPP instead of GPO because GPO was, suddenly, not deleting printers when students moved, contrary to behaviour under Windows XP. GPP has since proven itself slightly flaky, and every now and then the Delete All leaves a "catastrophic error" entry in Event Viewer, which sounds altogether like it's taking itself too seriously, and intermittently the computer decides it can't locate the printer despite having added it two dozen times already that morning.

 

You'd have thought that adding network printers was fairly basic corporate functionality, but I've stopped expecting anything approaching corporate usability to have been considered by MS with Win7...

[penfold]

If you find that it is not processing everything on first logon you could add a script to run a GPUpdate/force at logon which will process the GPP settings if they are not processed the first time (saving a relog) I have had to do this for some printer mappings as it wouldn't always work 100% (only affected first logon) and I spent too long trying to figure out why.

 

The GPupdate shouldn't make much difference (for the user to notice at least) and once you have cleared everything out you could always remove it if required but I've left it on our network without anyone noticing any difference.

[ZeroHour]

GPO based printer deployments dont remove the printers when the user roams, I made a script to clear them out on log off but GPP doesnt have that issue.

The user with GPO based printers as well generally cant remove the printers themselves once allocated either.

I would be very careful when rolling GPO printers out due to this.

[sonofsanta]

GPO based printer deployments dont remove the printers when the user roams, I made a script to clear them out on log off but GPP doesnt have that issue.

The user with GPO based printers as well generally cant remove the printers themselves once allocated either.

I would be very careful when rolling GPO printers out due to this.

 

Using a logoff script to clear printers seemed to mess with the ability to set default printers until the computer was restarted as well - not to mention that it would strip out any preferences the user had set that session. GPP seems better but is less reliable, but I quite like the idea of just scripting the gpupdate /force, as that should just happen in the background then.

 

Just confused because GPO printers did clear out in XP when the user roamed... maybe that was from pushprinterconnections.exe, thinking about it?

[ZeroHour]

Using a logoff script to clear printers seemed to mess with the ability to set default printers until the computer was restarted as well - not to mention that it would strip out any preferences the user had set that session. GPP seems better but is less reliable, but I quite like the idea of just scripting the gpupdate /force, as that should just happen in the background then.

 

Just confused because GPO printers did clear out in XP when the user roamed... maybe that was from pushprinterconnections.exe, thinking about it?

 

The log off script would work as it runs elevated where as users removing them usually cant.

I have never tried GPO printers with XP sadly so not sure but we certainly had the problem with GPO printers following the users.

[robyholmes]

I have found it best to first create a 'Delete all network printers' printer in GPP, then add the printers. Just make sure its in that order. That way any old network printers get removed before it adds the new ones.

[sonofsanta]

The GPupdate shouldn't make much difference (for the user to notice at least) and once you have cleared everything out you could always remove it if required but I've left it on our network without anyone noticing any difference.

 

Don't know why, but just running a bat file with "gpupdate /force" in it slowed logons down massively; the computer just hangs at a plain blue background. Rubbish :/

[deano]

There are a couple of fixes you can do that help with GPP Printers. I had to carry out these tasks as we too rolled out GPP printers over the summer. The first fix is a reg hack that removes shared printers on logoff, this will then force the next logon to re-evaluate the printer setup and default. The second was a hotfix from Microsoft. We have one GPP that has all the printers in.

 

It will go through and add then delete if you are not in the ILT. Works great now with the hotfix, but without it would get stuck on the first printer and then give up

[Liam]

I'm experiencing very similar problems but using mandatory profiles. It takes a second login to get into gear.

 

Oddly the printer seems to be there.. But it's not default and group policy results has no record of being succuessful nor failing..

 

I'm really at wits end with gpp for deploying printers.. Iv tried everything other than creating a new profile. I don't want to be doing that's it's a right pain.

 

It's only happened since using win 7 I never seen this in xp.

 

Hope someone could shed some light on this.

[Arcolite]

I have found it best to first create a 'Delete all network printers' printer in GPP, then add the printers. Just make sure its in that order. That way any old network printers get removed before it adds the new ones.

 

That's what I've got already, but it doesn't always work. Most times it seems to need two logins before it applies.

[penfold]

@sonofsanta - I ran the update as a vbs script which updates the user section only. I got the code from somewhere else but can't remember the site sorry. Below is a copy of what we use. Below is a copy of the vbs script I used here without causing logon problems. The one thing I remember reading is that you need to call the file something like SilentGPUpdate.vbs as if you run GPupdate it can cause the system to go into a loop continusly running GPUpdate and then repeating.

 

'Define Variables and Objects.

Set WshShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

 

'Note: Gpupdate command has to be run twice as the ECHO command can't answer more than one question.

 

'Refresh the USER policies and also answer no to logoff if asked.

Result = WshShell.Run("cmd /c echo n | gpupdate /target:user /force",0,true)

 

'Hand back the errorlevel

Wscript.Quit(Result)

 

Edit: If i got it from someone on here, thanks and apologies not recognising your work.

Edited September 28, 2012 by penfold

[Miscbrah]

I have found it best to first create a 'Delete all network printers' printer in GPP, then add the printers. Just make sure its in that order. That way any old network printers get removed before it adds the new ones.

 

Yes we do this also, I discovered this was best practice... All printers set as 'Replace' too.

[ZeroHour]

Don't know why, but just running a bat file with "gpupdate /force" in it slowed logons down massively; the computer just hangs at a plain blue background. Rubbish :/

That can easily slow logins down quite a lot depending on how you setup your policies.

You shouldnt need to do this as it applies this when you login anyway.

 

I'm experiencing very similar problems but using mandatory profiles. It takes a second login to get into gear.

 

Oddly the printer seems to be there.. But it's not default and group policy results has no record of being succuessful nor failing..

 

I'm really at wits end with gpp for deploying printers.. Iv tried everything other than creating a new profile. I don't want to be doing that's it's a right pain.

 

It's only happened since using win 7 I never seen this in xp.

 

Hope someone could shed some light on this.

 

One thing to test is the checkbox for applying in the user context rather then system level which is default.

I presume its a w7 profile not a xp one migrated?

 

Drivers are the most common issue usually and certain HP ones especially (points at universHELL driver)

The spooler service can crash with bad drivers losing all printers until you reboot. W7 does have a GP setting though to run spooler drivers in isolation, this means one driver shouldnt be able to kill the service but if the driver crashes the person WILL lose the printer in the printer section of w7 until its readded by relogging in.

Edited September 28, 2012 by ZeroHour

[sonofsanta]

@sonofsanta - I ran the update as a vbs script which updates the user section only. I got the code from somewhere else but can't remember the site sorry. Below is a copy of what we use. Below is a copy of the vbs script I used here without causing logon problems. The one thing I remember reading is that you need to call the file something like SilentGPUpdate.vbs as if you run GPupdate it can cause the system to go into a loop continusly running GPUpdate and then repeating.

 

'Define Variables and Objects.

Set WshShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

 

'Note: Gpupdate command has to be run twice as the ECHO command can't answer more than one question.

 

'Refresh the USER policies and also answer no to logoff if asked.

Result = WshShell.Run("cmd /c echo n | gpupdate /target:user /force",0,true)

 

'Hand back the errorlevel

Wscript.Quit(Result)

 

Edit: If i got it from someone on here, thanks and apologies not recognising your work.

That seems to work better - although it may be that my BAT file did the slow logon because it was just called gpupdate.bat and so resulted in an eternal loop of calling itself, as you mentioned above. Setting it as a logon script still delays the desktop by ten seconds, though, so what I've done is save the script to a shared location and set it to run under User Policies > Admin Templates > System > Logon > Run these programs at user logon - that way it runs but it doesn't delay anything. We'll see if it actually resolves the problem or just shifts it to later in the logon process, now I have a sinking feeling that as often as the extra refresh fixes it, it will break it again, so I will be keeping a close eye on it...

 

You shouldnt need to do this as it applies this when you login anyway.

Most the time it does, and it applies it fine - but intermittently it decides that the printer can't be found, which is BS as it has found the printer for the last three dozen logons in a row and nothing has changed since then. Logging off and logging on again usually fixes this but it'd be nice (and make me look better) if it just bloomin' worked. No rhyme nor reason to the times it doesn't, 5 people in a row will be fine then the next person comes along and borked. Stupid GPP!

[penfold]

Most the time it does, and it applies it fine - but intermittently it decides that the printer can't be found, which is BS as it has found the printer for the last three dozen logons in a row and nothing has changed since then. Logging off and logging on again usually fixes this but it'd be nice (and make me look better) if it just bloomin' worked. No rhyme nor reason to the times it doesn't, 5 people in a row will be fine then the next person comes along and borked. Stupid GPP!

 

This is why I ended up sticking the refresh in as I found it didn't apply the default printer 100% of the time and this caused problems with jobs being logged constantly with printers not working when in actual fact they had printed to the wrong printer.

[SS07]

There are a couple of fixes you can do that help with GPP Printers. I had to carry out these tasks as we too rolled out GPP printers over the summer. The first fix is a reg hack that removes shared printers on logoff, this will then force the next logon to re-evaluate the printer setup and default. The second was a hotfix from Microsoft. We have one GPP that has all the printers in.

 

It will go through and add then delete if you are not in the ILT. Works great now with the hotfix, but without it would get stuck on the first printer and then give up

 

Do you have any additional details on the specific hotfix and the reg hack?

[eddyc]

Do you have any additional details on the specific hotfix and the reg hack?

 

I'm interested in seeing this too - we are also having intermittant gpp mappings...

[Psymon]

There is an option called "Delete All" in GPP which you can just put at No.1 in the order, that way when the user logs into any machine it removes all printers, then re-installs the ones required.