On Page 1 of our Deploying Printers with Group Policy Preferences guide, we covered the prerequisites needed and how to deploy a computer side printer. Let’s now look at user side printer, default options, and troubleshooting!
User Configuration: Shared Printer
For our example, we are going to setup a user side shared printer. Navigate to User Configuration/Preferences/Control Panel Settings and select Printers. Right click and select New – Shared Printer.
As you can see, Shared printers are very easy to setup! Simply change the Action to Create and enter in the Shared printer path. If needed, set the printer as the default printer. Finally, select the Common tab and set any Item Level Targeting (if needed).
Preferences stored in a single GPO process from the top down. Let’s say that you create three preferences and set all three to be the default. Preference 3 will run last and will be the default printer for your users.
What About Logging and Errors?
If a Group Policy Printer Preference fails, it will record an event in the Application Event Log. Possible errors include: unknown printers (check your printer name/UNC), unknown print processors (check your driver and print processor – should be Win Print/RAW), unknown name (set your printer to create – make sure printer is online).
Having a printer fail to deploy can be a big problem! If you don’t currently monitor for these errors, you can setup a free and simple monitoring solution with Scheduled Tasks. Here is a guide on doing that.
Wrapping It Up
So there you have it – the quick way that you can start deploying printers with Group Policy Preferences! One final note though – Printer Preferences process in the background. This means that you can set up a new print preference, run a remote GPUpdate, and the printer will install silently (even if the user is logged in). If you still have questions, check out this guide that covers best practices for Printer Preferences.
We covered considerations before you deploy your first printer and Administrative Templates you must set. We also covered two method of deploying: shared and TCP/IP.
I tried this on virtual pc’s running within Citrix VDI-in-a-box. The OS on the VM is Windows 7/64.
I found that it did NOT run in the background; it took two, three, four, or even more minutes to complete, and during that time the desktop did not appear and the users thought the (virtual) machine had hung.
The evidence for this is in the detailed GPO log where you see very very long execution times for that feature.
Did I set something wrongly?
Such long logon times are not acceptable and we had to abandon the idea and go back to having them add their printers manually and rely on the roaming profile to “remember” it for the next logon – which also does not work very well (printers randomly disappear, default changes itself, etc etc).
Bit of a nightmare really. Any suggestions welcome.
I assume you deployed the printers to the user side. Is that correct? If so, any chance that the printer can be deployed the user’s virtual machine before logon?
The printers can install in the background but will slow down the user logon if not install prior.
Hi Joseph,
I set this up using the User Configuration method.
The printers are set to Replace as i’m using ‘Remove this item when it is no longer applied’.
The printers is being deployed fine, in fact it deploys them every time a user logs on, so after 5 logons there are 5 of each printer.
When i choose a default printer and log off. The next time I log on, the default printer has reset to the first one on the list.
Any ideas how to resolve this?
I am seeing these 2 issues on both 2012 and 2012 R2.
I am running a Hyper-V setup with each role on seperate servers (AD, Print, RDS, Broker, Workstation).
It is the same issue on both Workstation (Win 8.1) and RDS.
KL_Dane
First – you might want to switch to create, this will speed up the logon and prevent the reinstallation of the printer.
If you can’t do that, you will need to add an Item Level Target to the printer install. Create a registry item level target that is set to does not exist. Set the path to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\Connections\NAME OF PRINTER
Check the registry on a client to verify the printer name.
I tried to use create and update, and they both does not produce the extra printer, I agree that is the way to solve that.
How do I get the extra printers I have now, deleted? I tried to delete the user profile locally but they still exist when I log back in with my testuser.
You might want to add a delete all network printers option and move it to the top of the processing order (item 1). Set it to run once and do not reapply.
First, thanks for the guide :)¨
The Run Once command, can I rerun it?
If so, how?
Lets say I want to remove all current printers from a number of desktops and create only those I have configured in the GPO. Then I would use the Run Once with Delete all IP printer Connection.
But then in 3 month time, I’ll to clean up again, how do I then use the Run Once?
You would copy the preference and delete the old one.