Deploying printers question

kirbz · 17 Mar 2013 at 10:47

Hi all,

I have a question about rolling out printers.

Our current set up is rolling them out using a login script, printers are installed on the server and shares set up. (\\server\printer)

The question I have is, is there a way of installing the associated print drivers on client machines without needed admin rights? It's fine on xp, but on vista upwards you need admin rights.

Ideally I would install all printer drivers for the site first, then use the login script to remove all the printers and re add them depending on the user type as different users need access to different printers.

Thanks all

LizardKing · 17 Mar 2013 at 13:05

Deploy via GPO or enable "point and print" via group policy

kirbz · 17 Mar 2013 at 14:00

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestion, is it the deploy printer option in GPO? I did that and ran a gpupdate /force and nothing happened. I'll have a good play with it tomorrow looking at what you said.

Also the scripts are ran using gpo. Tried running as login and startup but it asked to install drivers.

Hellsmk2 · 18 Mar 2013 at 20:47

There's a couple of GP settings you need to do this cleanly - it's a doddle though.

1. Enable: Comp - Admin Templates - System - Driver Installations - Allow Users to install device drivers for these classes

Enter the following CLSIDs (including the {}):

{4d36e979-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
{4658ee7e-f050-11d1-b6bd-00c04fa372a7}

2. Enable: Comp - Admin Templates - Printers - Point and Print Restrictions

That should be it - you may need to give the computer it is applied to a quick reboot.

If it still doesn't play ball, there's another three group policies you can set along with the ones already mentioned:

1. Disable: Comp - Policies - Window Settings - Security Settings - Local Policies - Security Options - Devices: Prevent users from installing printer drivers

2. Disable: Comp - Policies - Windows Settings - Security Settings - Local Policies - Security Options - User Account Control - User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation

(I'm not convinced that these two are needed, especially as Not Configured means exactly that, but we have a couple of sites that claim it didn't work until they did the above...)

3. Enable: User - Policies - Administrative Templates - Control Panel - Printers - Point and Print Restrictions

kirbz · 18 Mar 2013 at 22:06

Hi,

I've figured this out, after much googling I basically just did point 3 and print drivers just installed. There are 2 settings for updating and adding print drivers which I set to run without elevated prompts.

As you can tell I am new to servers, ad and gpo and am still learning, I've only dabbled before my current job.

Thanks all.

LizardKing · 18 Mar 2013 at 23:29

kirbz said:
As you can tell I am new to servers, ad and gpo and am still learning, I've only dabbled before my current job.

Its a bit of a black art to begin with but once you get your head around it it becomes a doddle! server 2013 brings some much needed improvements!

And make good use of the Group policy results wizard

kirbz · 20 Mar 2013 at 23:10

Ah yeah it is a black art but I'm getting the best experience with them, its a shame they get overlooked, I look after 5 sites IT which means 5 servers ranging from 2003 to 2012 so a lot of variation. It's interesting though.

I make good use of gpupdate and gpresult too

I'll be lingering in here a lot more now.