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Set printers to Monochrome En Mass

Answered Set printers to Monochrome En Mass

  • Monday, September 24, 2012 8:35 PM
     
     
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    Does anyone know of a way to set the queues on a printer server to Black and white (Monochrome) en mass? Either with a script or tool of some sort.

    My goal is when clients connect, I want them to default to black and white and have to choose color. This can be achieved in the GUI by going to "Properties">"Advanced">"Printing Defaults". However, I have 3300+ queues that I imported using Print Migrator and they did not pull these defaults, so doing it by hand isn't realistic. Also we have no good way to deploy via GPO.

    I have tried the following methods to achieve this:

    "setprinter "printername" -9 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1" 

    Result: This will set the "Preferences" under the general tab. However, this does not make it the default setting when mapping to the queue. Which is my desired result.

    I also tried the powershell script found here using .NET methods. However, it seemed to have no effect. Though it indicated it was successful. 

    For the most part, I have the HP Universal Printing PCL 5 v5.4 and Ricoh PCL 6 Universal Driver. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks, Todd

     

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  • Tuesday, September 25, 2012 9:54 AM
     
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    Hi tarnett1,

    as I understand you can iterate through all your printers then change PRINTER_INFO_9 devmode structure, in your particular case it is dmColor, change it to 1 from 2.

    But when I test it in my C# app at WIN7 x64 Enterprise box, I am only succeed if I change PRINTER_INFO_8 (Global), I dunno why, maybe I need to dig it more :)


    so you can try

    "setprinter "printername" -8 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1"  it might work

     
  • Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:09 PM
     
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    Sergey,

    Thank you for responding. the level 8 command above works on individual queues. However, if I try to iterate through my server 

    setprinter "" 8 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1"

    it appears successful, but when I go to check the queues they are still set to color. If I run the command again specifying a specific queue it work. Any ideas? I should add my server is Windows 2008 R2 SP1

    Thanks, Todd


    • Edited by tarnett1 Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:20 PM
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  • Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:17 PM
     
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    Also, I tried it with  
    setprinter \\myservername 8 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1"

    and had the same result.

    Thanks, Todd

     
  • Wednesday, September 26, 2012 5:52 PM
     
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    I have another update. I was able to successfully set the option by wrapping it in a powershell foreach loop like so:

    $list=get-wmiobject win32_printer
Foreach ($printer in $list) {

$name=$printer.name
Write-host "Working on " $name "..."
setprinter $name 8 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1"
    It got the job done, but I'm still curious as to why the other method wasnt working. Any thoughts or solutions are welcome.

    Thanks, Todd

     
  • Wednesday, September 26, 2012 6:34 PM
     
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    ..not sure that setprinter.exe is a totally bug-free tool.

    Alan Morris's quote: "Unfortunately the version of the tool available for download does not properly work for level 9."

    Also I can confirm that setting devmode does not work for me on Xerox Global Print driver, but HP does..

    Actually I am not a setprinter.exe user :)

     
  • Saturday, May 11, 2013 12:53 PM
     
     
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    Hi,

    I am new to this and this is exactly what my problem is.  ie. setprinter \\PrintServer\$name 8 "pdevmode=dmcolor=1"doesn't change the Printing in black and white check box in the GUI on Windows 2008 R2 SP1.  any other setting using by Setprinter is working fine and you can confirm it via GUI but not this one.

    I notice this Post is quite old but hope that someone is still doing it and still having the same problem.

    just wonder is there any other way to do this.

    Thanks

     
  • Saturday, May 11, 2013 1:05 PM
     
     
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    Hi again,

    just another question related to this check box "Printing in black and white". If you do manually tick that box in the GUI, how can you find that in the registry?Thanks