Printer Drivers Vanilla 2003

[kmount]

Good morning all,

 

Further to my recent thread here about my ventures in the coming weeks I'd like to get some advice and best practice on printer deployment on a vanilla network.

 

How do you folks do it?

 

It need not be too complicated I wouldn't have thought, I'm just wondering the best way of deploying drivers to the machines and having them mapped at logon.

 

Thanks for your input, great minds and all that jazz.

 

Kim.

[mac_shinobi]

Is this R2 or not ?

[kmount]

Yep it is, should I be looking at using the R2 PMC?

[mac_shinobi]

That's how I would do it ( aside from maybe being able to set default printer )

 

On R2 they normally set the default printer by its alphabetical name ie

 

A Printer

 

B Printer

 

A Printer would be set as default as obviously A comes before B

 

With regards to the printer driver side you can install the printer on the server using the server driver with relevant driver and then once installed and shared on the server ( under the sharing tab ) there should be an additional drivers tab where you install the client drivers afaik.

 

Not sure if you want to use a vbscript ( or script of some description ) to set the default printers.

 

Plenty of examples around

 

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/Logon/LogonScript_Printer_Bonus.htm

[eean]

Yes. There are plenty of guides in the webnet teaching you how.

It's best to install the printer on the server, share it and get the clients to connect to the server (rather than printing direct via IP). This will remove any driver issues.

 

You may like to have a look at this thread. It has a script I wrote to set the default printer per machine and via active directory.

[mac_shinobi]

Yes. There are plenty of guides in the webnet teaching you how.

It's best to install the printer on the server, share it and get the clients to connect to the server (rather than printing direct via IP). This will remove any driver issues.

 

You may like to have a look at this thread. It has a script I wrote to set the default printer per machine and via active directory.

 

I think that was the one with the zip download that included an adm file along with a script or something along those lines - I've never played with ADM files and not currently got any virtual network setup on my comp so not dabbled with that but would be good to know steps on how to apply the adm and all the rest of it

[Michael]

Here's a good guide that I have used. The advantage over scripts is that it's nice and easy to setup, but you can also deploy printers to users or computers or a combination of both!

[mac_shinobi]

Here's a good guide that I have used. The advantage over scripts is that it's nice and easy to setup, but you can also deploy printers to users or computers or a combination of both!

 

Not sure if it can do it ( so correct me if I am wrong )

 

But what about group policy preferences , think there was a pdf posted on GP Prefs a while back

[kmount]

Thanks everyone, will have a read now!

[eean]

I think that was the one with the zip download that included an adm file along with a script or something along those lines -

Yes. For some reason the zip doesn't work though so I've pasted the 2 files into the post.

[Michael]

Not sure if it can do it ( so correct me if I am wrong )

 

You can because I have done it, trust me There isn't an ADM as such, I believe it's linked in with the schema which goes from 30 in 2003 to 31 with 2003 R2. Once you've added it as a role, you can access it on the Administrative Tools menu which is the best way to see how it all works.