Search the Community

Hi everyone, I use Group Policy Preferences (user configuration) to deploy a copier at a small office. The copier is the only printer on the network. The GPP option has always been set to "Create", and I've left it there so anyone who logs in on a machine they haven't logged into before simply gets the new printer. Done. Easy. Now, they've just received a new copier. The copier share name is the same, since the new copier is simply replacing the old copier. I replaced the driver on the server for that printer, set the options in the driver, and then changed the GPP option from "Create" to "Replace". This works. Everyone received the new copier the next time they logged in, as the GPP deleted the old printer connection and re-made it with the new one. My question is how long do I keep the "Replace" in there before switching it back to "Create"? In my mind, I'm thinking I'd have to leave it there before every user who's potentially logged into any machine before has logged into that machine again and had their printer connections swapped. Right now, the users won't be able to create their own preferences for that printer, because the copier connection will be deleted and re-added every time they log in. I was hesitant to set the GPP to "Update", since A, I didn't know if the drivers would change properly from the old ones, and B, I didn't know if that would overwrite custom settings set by the user in their driver every time. So what do you guys do? Should I leave the GPP set to Replace indefinitely? Should I set the "Run Once" box? Should I leave it at Replace for a couple more weeks then set it back to Create? If I leave it at Replace and Run Once, will new users who have never logged into a particular computer before receive the connection as if it was set to Create? What do you think? Thanks in advance!

Hi, For previous versions of Windows we've always used mandatory profiles - 1 per lab and set via GPO. We normally log on with a local admin account , run all of the software , configure any tweaks to settings (eg default save dir etc) then log off and with another account copy the profile to network , regedit and make it mandatory (as well as deleting local & locallow folders). With Windows 10 mandatory profiles seem to be causing problems with search & start button unless we leave appdata\local and locallow in the profile which makes them huge. Just wondering if anyone has any guidance on using GPO/GPP instead of mandatory profiles. If using GPP etc how do you know which files from the profile are actually needed and which would be recreated ? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. Just trying to get my head around the GPO/GPP approach. Typical software includes Android Studio , Eclipse , Office , SPSS , Visual Studio etc Thanks in advance, tango

I'm looking for a way to allow the staff a way to install fonts on to their PCs without giving them admin access. I can find various articles claiming to show you how to do it but thus far no luck. I'm trying to get it working on Windows 7 SP1. Has anyone managed to do this?

I am remapping drives using Group Policy Preferences. Before drive u:\ was for \\server\users and then the person had to go to their folder. I decided to make u: \\servers\users\username which makes more sense. I also wanted to make it more personal so I made the label 'My User Folder'. The mapping is correct but it has the old label "dewey on 'server\users" In the registry there is a key called MountPoints2 and it shows both the old new mapping, but the label is attached to the wrong one. What's up with that? I suppose I could give up my 'My User Folder' idea but I am pretty stubborn. Is it safe to delete the HKCU's MountPoints2 key? It does have a lot of other entries. Thanks Jane

Sorry to start another thread but can't find the answer to this question. Why is there no option to add "shared printer" in computer configuration. It is present in user configuration along with TCP/IP Printer. If I add by IP address will it work in exactly the same way? Why is there no set as default option in computer configuration? As a work around can i just add a shared printer in user configuration and use loopback processing to target this at all users who use a specified OU of computers? Also I am creating this GPO on a windows 7 machine for deployment on windows 7 clients but our DC is 2003 R2. I will apply hotfix You experience a long domain logon time in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 after you deploy Group Policy preferences to the computer Does it matter that i'm not running 2003 R2 not 2008 R2 server?

Hello, I recently made a post about deploying printers via gpp. I have this working fine for our physical systems on site however I have seemed to have overlooked our citrix desktops. Is it possible to use Item-level Targeting (an environment variable) to add a printer based on the client name of the desktop and not the actual computer name? We have 3 rooms all with thin clients which have desktops from the same XenDesktop pool. Is it possible to deploy a printer using gpp to citrix desktops based on client name? example: Citrix Desktop Name: VSTUW8-024 Client Name: H11-06 Printer to map: H11-Mono Hope this makes sense? Thank you, William Edit: I found a way to do it using Citrix Policies. A video can be found at http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/5177 Just need to use Client Name instead of IP range as that is what is used in video

It's everyone's favourite topic! And it's driving me bl%%dy mad at the moment and making me look bad to boot. We did the Windows 7 thing this summer, so printers needed redeploying which we did from a new 2k8R2 print server. We used to do printers by GPO (pushprinterconnections.exe etc.) but under 2k8R2, printers were never unlinked from roaming profiles, so students ended up with every printer in school added. Rubbish. So we moved to GPP which, 98% of the time, works fine. We can set the default, clear all printers etc. but intermittently, printers will fail to install on login. Each printer has its own GPO. Loopback processing is set to merge, and a shared printer is added under User Preferences using the FQDN of the server. Using the NetBIOS name was worse. Using the print server's IP made no difference. We need to add them shared for PCounter, we can't add them directly by IP. Setting a VBS script to force a gpupdate on login seems to fix the problem at login. Unfortunately when policy refreshes in the background, printers then sometimes disappear. Not a problem for most people, but some staff are logged on at machines for longer than an hour so get hit by this 90 minute refresh (this includes my line manager in SMT). If I set the group policy to not refresh printers during background policy refreshes, it prevents the login script from re-evaluating printers, so printers might be missing from login, therefore affecting more users. Not an improvement. All my printers are using the most up to date drivers available (Oki Executive Series, fwiw). The most common error is 0x80070bc4 No printers were found but occasionally 0x8007007a The data area passed to a system call is too small crops up as well. If I tick the Common option to Run in Logged On Users Security Context then I get errors about the environment being incorrect instead, and there's no improvement. 98% of the time it is fine. The printers are all added fine. There is no rhyme nor reason to the failures. I am going mad trying to pin this down. So: anyone know why this happens occasionally? Anyone know how to stop background refreshes without blocking the script, or a way to retrigger the script on background refresh? A way of getting more detailed logs than what I'm seeing in the application log? Or, if all else fails, anyone got a nice, quick, clean script to add a printer that won't slow logins down? No need for logic with the computer name etc. as the one-GPO-per-printer works fine. tl;dr: why won't printer GPP just work, goddammit.

Hi All, We have many student labs and students can use any of them. To support them being able to hit print and have the job go to the nearest lab printer, we use roaming profiles (mainly for folders etc) and a Group Policy for the printers. The GPO for the printers in each lab first does a "Delete all printers" then it installs the relevant printers for that lab. What is happening is that the 'Delete All' printers step doesn't work and students are effectively collecting printer objects as they move around. If I get the user to type GPUPDATE then the Delete Printers part succeeds and the correct printers apply as expected. How do I fix this? Errors include: The user 'Delete All' preference item in the 'LAB-XYZ-GPO {DBFE18B8-7B62-4783-929C-9629F4FCA27E}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x8000ffff Catastrophic failure' This error was suppressed. The user 'LAB-XYZ-PRINTER1' preference item in the 'LAB-XYZ-GPO {DBFE18B8-7B62-4783-929C-9629F4FCA27E}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x80070709 The printer name is invalid.' This error was suppressed. I've checked the GPOs and they are using the FQDN to refer to the printer servers. They are definitely running in the user's context (both for the delete and the update). thanks for any pointers