mmholland

Hey guys, We have about 400 PC's in our environment. Previously, the IT guys that I am currently joined with have had issues with group policy deploying printers. Actually, group policy in general, and that is for 1 reason...SID's. Back before I started they was not aware of sys prep before cloning using ghost. We have a mixture of windows xp machines, and now since I started over a year ago, all new PC's, or PC's we repair get a windows 7 image on them. When I started they were using Clonezilla and ghost to image PC's. Since I have started, I have setup a FOG server to deploy OS images. I have virtualbox setup that I take a snapshot of before I sysprep it and upload it to FOG so that I can make changes/updates to the image. Anywho, moving forward I have been imaging PC's correctly using sysprep before I upload the image. Using an unattend.xml as an answer file to make things smoothly, and making FOG install a few things after the cloning is done, and join the domain. Makes my life very easy and less time consuming. Moving further I have been working on deploying printers through Group Policy. Since I am using sysprep, the SID's are all correct and none are the same. As I roll out new PC's to different locations, I am now using group policy to deploy them. I am not worrying about deploying to windows XP machines with the same SIDS...as they will all be replaced in the next year...From here on out I want to use group policy to deploy. This leads to my actual question. There are several locations that I have already replaced PC's since I started...All printers have been setup as local ports pointing to our print server...adding a local port like this \\printserver\shared printer name.....These machines are windows 7 PCs with correct SIDS....I know that when I make a group policy object for the location in question and add it to deploy by PC, I am going to end up with duplicate printers since the printers are already setup for local ports so that it would show up for all users. What would be the best way to remove all of the local ports from say a remote location at a time so that there are no duplicate printers?

I checked your blog out, and it was helpful, but I still have not been successful...I have saved a report of the working object and the non working object, and after going through your blog and changing 2 settings to enabled...after comparing the 2 they are identical, but will not work wth!? Also, the link in your blog is dead. Thanks man!

I really don't understand why it wont work with an object that I create to use as testing when I pick the right OU in print management, create an object, and select it....yet it will work with a different object that one of the previous admin's have made...why is this?

This print server was just made about a month ago...We have not tried to add printers by double clicking on them since we have built the new print server. Its one of those things that has just been a problem in the past. What is the best way to deploy a printer using Group Policy? EDIT- I am not doing something right...The first OU I applied this to which is the one that I fall in, it worked fine, but I edited an existing object that we no longer needed...After I deleted that object and re-created one just for printers, it does not work...I am doing something wrong but don't know what since I don't know enough about Group Policy haha. This should actually be moved to windows server 2008 not w2k8 r3

Hello guys! I have been at my current job for a year now as a network technician...Since I have been here a year now, I am starting to get deeper into things. I just got done with my last project...before the guys here were using clonezilla/ghost to clone PC's...I setup a FOG server in order to make things go smoother, and be more automated.... Anyway, back on topic. We have a windows 2008 r2 core server setup as a print server. For whatever reason when you go out to explorer and go to \\printserver and double click on the shared printer...for some reason it will cause issues sometimes, but not always...When I say issues, then it takes a lot longer than normal to print, or sometimes does not print at all...so what we do is setup printers manually by creating a local port and making the local port \\printserver\name_of_printer then add the correct driver & settings. I noticed if you use the print management tool in Windows 7 to manage the printers on our print server, if you right click on a shared printer, and click on deploy with active directory, in one of the OU's that I tried it in, it creates the port as the printers IP address as opposed to creating it as a local port. I am somewhat new to Group Policy...I have played around in it a little bit, but not a whole lot. What would be the best way for me to deploy printers using Group Policy? For some reason a different OU that I tried this in I could not get them to deply...Windows logs on 2 machines in the OU gives me the following error message: Failed to register for user printing preferences change notification. Open the Services snap-in and confirm that the Printer Spooler service is running For more information, see Help and Support Center at .