What controls the publishing of shared printers to the list?

May 12, 2008

Hey guys,

I've been noticing a minor issue here at work. For the past year or so, I have gotten into the habit of adding every printer to the server so that jobs were more easily managed, and printers could be more easily installed on machines. The only thing I don't like about this method is that if you install a printer on a machine this way, it only is installed for the profile you install it under.

One issue I've been having is recent additions do not seem to be getting published in the list. Frequently I will setup a printer on the server for a specific tray as the request comes in. Once it's added and shared, I go to view the printer list and of course I don't see it there; I typically have to then add it by the \\computer\sharename method. I also noted that a printer I added a few weeks ago also is not displaying in the list.

1) What controls how quickly a printer goes from being setup / shared to being published on the list?

2) Is there any way to speed up that process so they are immediately available for addition?

May 12, 2008

It's always instant for me when creating printer shares. However when searching for printers I search using Active Directory rather than via its share name.

Regarding the printers only on the profile you set it up for this is by design. Typically you would control this via a login script or if your running Windows 2003 R2 via Group Policy.

May 12, 2008

I have wanted to setup either, using GP or script... however the scripts I was never able to iron out. I think with GP, if I can do this properly (I haven't looked TOO much into it... though now we have PolicyMaker also), I believe I would have to setup a bunch of policies for printing, and only specify them by the users that can use them... instead of breaking up into numerous little sub-groups.