Sign in
 
HomeWindows Server 2012Windows Server 2008 R2Windows Server 2003LibraryForums
Windows Server TechCenter >
> 
> 
Problems with printer deployment to windows 7 clients

Proposed Answer Problems with printer deployment to windows 7 clients

  • Wednesday, February 22, 2012 4:09 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    We would appreciate some guidance to give our users a better printing experience on our Windows 7 clients

    which receive their printers via Group Policy, deployment being from a windows 2003 print server.

    We deploy printers per computer from
    windows server 2003 r2 print servers not using point and print to our windows 7
    workstations.

    (The printer AD group policy has point and print
    unconfigured)

    On the local machines point and print restrictions is disabled.

    Our domain controllers are a mixture of 2003 and 2008 r2.We are not using GP Preferences to deploy printers but
    rather using the print management tool on the print servers to

    “Deploy with group policy” the different printers.

    Before this we were using the same servers with
    pushprinterconnections.exe to deploy the printers to the then windows xp workstations with no problems.

    The  windows 2003 print servers use Pcounter to
    implement a  follow me printing system based on Magna Carta smart card system which
    enables a person to print a job on any floor of the building.  The printers in
    the Mono pull queues are mainly HP LaserJet 9050 DN and for the colour are
     HP LaserJet 4570 DN both use the standard PCL 6 drivers.

    The queue my-mono is representative of all black and white
    printers in the building.

    When we rolled out windows 7 we found some clients were not
    getting their printers at all, others were but with Access Denied exclamation marks on them and yet some others worked ok and received their printers.

    On one of these machines that did not get its printers we
    tried Add Printer, chose network printer and typed in \\myserver1.

    up came a list of the printers available on myserver1. When
    we selected one it came up with a message - could not connect to the queue

    We changed to the ip address of the server \\ipaddress\printqueuename and a
    connection was made ok.

    Ran nslookup with ip address (reverse lookup) and with the
    FQDN  and cN all showed a correct FQDN for the print server yet add
    printer could not finish its job.

    To try and stabilise the situation we created a bat file
    with the following lines and arranged through a windows scheduled task

    running under the system username on the client to have this
    bat file executed at login.

    We also made available to the users a shortcut to this bat
    file so that they could refresh the printers if required.

    We had to put in repeated set the default lines to make sure
    the proper printer was being set to the default.

    This was due to the colour printer being made available
    first and being set to the default ahead of the real default pull print queue
    being available.

    The bat file contained:

    msg.exe %UserName% /TIME:90 "The system is allocating
    the printers, a second message will be displayed when this process is complete.
    This may take over a minute to ensure the mono printer is the default
    printer."

    gpupdate

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe /dn /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe /dn /q /n\\myserver1\my-colour

    wait 2

    rem connect the printers

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe /in /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe /in /q /n\\myserver1\my-colour

    wait 10

    rem /y means set tis printer to be the default printer

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    wait 10

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    wait 10

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    wait 10

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    wait 10

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    wait 10

    c:\windows\system32\printui.exe  /q /n\\myserver1\my-mono /y

    msg.exe %Username% "Printer allocation Complete"

    RunDll32.exe SHELL32.DLL,SHHelpShortcuts_RunDLLPrintersFolder

    With this setup we stabilised the situation a lot but in
    peak times we still get the problem of people not getting their
    printers.

    Point and print.

    --------------

    We tried point and print restrictions at group policy level

    to only have certain servers be used to obtain drivers from.

    This made matters worse by not allowing the above printui
    commands to execute on some machines, others
    worked ok.

    We began to get messages:

    "A policy is in effect on your computer which prevents
    you from connecting to this print queue.Please contact your system administrator. "

    We thought point and print restrictions being applied would
    allow a non admin user to bring down a printer driver.

    Spooler errors

    ---------------

    We also get spooler errors from time top time.

    When looking at the event logger found certain dll's that
    were triggering it. Yet this does not generally be the case with all machines.

    How come a machine is getting a faulty dll from a server
    wheras the machine beside it is ok.

    Any help appreciated, thanks.




     

All Replies

  • Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:33 AM
    Answerer
     
     Proposed Answer
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Verify that you have the Computer Point and Print policy configured

    The Point and Print User configuration policy is ignored by Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Service Pack 2 release of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2307161

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:38 AM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Thanks for your reply.

    As I ve said in my foregoing message we tested the use of per computer point and print at AD Group Policy level but it was not allowing printui to install a printer in event of a user not obtaining a printer at login or getting access denied on a printer at login. When using printui the user would get the message "A policy is in effect on your computer which prevents you from connecting to this print queue.Please contact your system administrator. "

    When point and print restrictions was left unconfigured in AD group policy (user and computer) we did not get these messages.

    I was thinking of disabling point and print altogether to see what would happen. BTW we are still in the process of moving from 2003 to 2008 domain controllers.

    The person who logs in could get either OS at this point in time.

    1) we deploy the printers using AD Group policy from a 2003 print server running pcounter.

    2) we are running HP drivers

    3) we use printui to install the printers as without it we obtained no printers.

    4) We tested point and print (per computer only) but it stopped printui from working so we had to abandon it.

    thanks

    CJTF

     
  • Thursday, February 23, 2012 2:53 PM
    Answerer
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    I just wanted to make sure that you were not using the GPMC from 2003 to edit the domain policy since the Computer Point and print policy is not there in that version of the tool.

    I do not think what OS the printers are shared from is a factor.  Server 2003 does not have a digital signature on the drivers presented to Vista and greater clients so you do need to configure Point and Print if you wish non admin installation of the software.

    Since the 2003 machine does not support Package aware print drivers, make sure none of the Package Point and print policies are configured.

    There is a User policy that will prevent adding printers through UI.  You can run gpresult and grab the report and see if the User\Admin Templates\Control Panel\Printer\Prevent addition of printers policy is active on that machine. 

    If you have any issue with the spooler service failing when loading the drivers shared from the 2003 machine, Enable the Computer\Admin Templates\Printer\Override print driver execution compatibility setting reported by print driver.  This will force the print driver to load in the printisolationhost.exe process rather than the spooler when converting devmodes and rendering the print data.

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Thursday, February 23, 2012 5:08 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Prevent addition of printers policy is not active in any of our group policies deploying printers.

    Package aware print drivers, make sure none of the Package Point and print policies are configured - No none of these are.

    We dont run point and print as enabled as it will not allow the users to run printui coming up with the message

     "A policy is in effect on your computer which prevents you from connecting to this print queue.Please contact your system administrator. "

    When we enabled the point and print we used the FQDN's separated by semicolons of our 2 print servers.

    In the printui line above we used just the cname  - \\myserver1 rather than the FQDN  - this would hardly cause it to fail would it?

    CJTF

     
  • Sunday, February 26, 2012 12:32 AM
    Answerer
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    When the policy is unconfigured, Point and Print policy IS enabled.

    When changing the machine names in the policy, you will need to configure the security prompts. 

    The issue you are experiencing is due to multiple FQDN.

    I'll take a look if this is a known issue and get back to you but it may be a week or so

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Tuesday, February 28, 2012 3:40 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    This was the source we followed

    server1.domain;server2.domain

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319939

    thanks for looking into this for us.

    CJTF

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 2:03 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    The spooler suggested fix did not work for us

    ie

    If you have any issue with the spooler service failing when loading the drivers shared from the 2003 machine, Enable the Computer\Admin Templates\Printer\Override print driver execution compatibility setting reported by print driver.  This will force the print driver to load in the printisolationhost.exe process rather than the spooler when converting devmodes and rendering the print data.

    We found that the spooler service was not running when we login as an unprivileged user. It seems to be ok when logging in as a privileged user.

    Why would the spooler service not be starting for a non privileged user? It is set to start automatic and restart the service is in place in case it falls over.

    CJTF

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 2:47 PM
    Answerer
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0
    The print spooler service starts before logon, it's not dependent on the user.

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 3:05 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Looked at services

    Print spooler was started and its properties said started.

    Went to Printers and Faxes and when that window appeared the print spooler stopped.

    Same happens when you try to use the spooler in any way.

    e.g running Add Printer

    CJTF

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 4:15 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Did the same thing under a privileged user and the service remained started when I brought up Printers and faxes.

    My printer was also there.

    CJTF

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 4:22 PM
    Answerer
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    You have a driver installed that is corrupting the memory of the print spooler service.

    If the spooler is failing before you can actually delete them, you get to remove them the old fashioned way, in the registry. Bruce has some good tips. You may want to determine which driver is causing problems by deleting one entry at a time.

    http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/CleanPrinterDrivers.htm

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:53 PM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Thanks, I'll have a look. We have an HP 4350 pcl6 deployed through group policy from a windows 2003 print server to different venues here with no problems. The same drivers are also being deployed to my machine and work provided the user is a priviliged user. When i login using a non privileged AD username the problem starts. If drivers were corrupt would the effects not be seen in all venues and under priviliged users as well. My printers and faxes have no printers whatsoever when I login with a nonpriviliged username.

    When I login with a priviliged user my printer is ready for use. It seems to be a permissions problem.

    CJTF

     
  • Wednesday, March 14, 2012 1:10 AM
    Answerer
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0
    If the driver is the HPZUI4WM.dll I'd expect a failure no matter who is logged onto the machine.   I do not think this would be a corrupt driver issue.

    Alan Morris Windows Printing Team

     
  • Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:12 AM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Still getting the same problem  - we can print ok when we are under a privileged user but under a non privileged user there is no printer.

    tried running printui - tries to connect to the print server but comes up with  windows cannot connect to printer

    checked spooler service and it said started in the services window but when its properties were investigated it said stopped.

     

    Could you tell us what to do to override windows 7 's alphabetical order business for arranging printers.

    We are pestered by users not getting their proper default printers.

    The colour printer gets set to default.

    CJTF