Deploying Printers by using Group Policy

Print Management (Printmanagement.msc) can be used with Group Policy to automatically add printer connections to a computer's Printers and Faxes folder.

 

In order for the PushPrinterConnections.exe utility to work, you must update your Active Directory schema with the Windows Server 2003 R2 changes

 

The print server role must be installed and you must be a member of the Administrators group to perform these procedures. You must also have write access to the Group Policy object to use it to manage printers. Before you install printers by using Group Policy, you must have a GPO for your printer connections settings that is assigned to the appropriate users and computers. You can use the Group Policy Object Editor or Active Directory Users and Computers to create a GPO.

 

 

To install printers to groups of users or computers by using Group Policy

 

1.  Open the Administrative Tools folder, and then double-click Print Management.

 

2.  In the Print Management tree, under the appropriate print server, click Printers.

 

3.  In the results pane, right-click the printer you want to deploy, and then click Deploy with Group Policy.

 

4.  In the Deploy with Group Policy dialog box, click Browse, and then choose a Group Policy object.

 

5.  Click OK.

 

6.  To assign the printer connection setting to the GPO, do one or both of the following:

• As a per-user setting, select the The users that this GPO applies to (per user) check box.

 

• As a per-machine setting, select the The computers that this GPO applies to (per machine) check box.

 

 

7.  Click Add.

 

8.  Repeat steps 3 to 6 to add the printer connection setting to another GPO.

 

9.  Click OK.

 

 

To use the PushPrinterConnections.exe file

 

 1.  Using Group Policy Management console (gpmc.msc), right-click the GPO with your printer connections settings, and then click Edit.

 

2.  In the Group Policy Object Editor tree, navigate to one following locations:

• If the printer connections are deployed per-machine, go to Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Scripts (Startup/Shutdown).

 

• If the printer connections are deployed per-user, go to User Configuration, Windows Settings, Scripts (Logon/Logoff).

 

 

3.  Right-click Startup or Logon, and then click Properties.

 

4.  In the Logon Properties or Startup Properties dialog box, click Show Files.

 

5.  Copy the PushPrinterConnections.exe file to this location and then close the window.

 

6.  In the Logon Properties or Startup Properties dialog box, click Add.

 

7.  Type PushPrinterConnections.exe in the Script Name box.

 

8.  If you want to enable logging, type &endash;log in the Script Parameters box. Log files are written to %windir%\temp\ppcMachine.log (for per-computer connections) and %temp%\ppcUser.log (for per-user connections) on the computer on which the policy is applied.

 

9.  Click OK.

 

Note:  

Only per-user printer connections are supported on computers running Windows 2000. Per-machine printer connections are supported on computers running Windows XP or later.

 

For per-computer connections, the printer connections will be added when the client computer restarts. For per-user connections, the printer connections will be added when the user logs on. If you remove the printer connection settings from the GPO, PushPrinterConnections.exe will remove the corresponding printers from the client computer on the next restart or user logon