Mass Printer Installs for entire enterprise

[forgotten21]

Hey all;

I have been doing unattended installs for years now and I have learned more from this site than anywhere on the web so I thought I would give the group a question which is hounding me.

I work for a large company and I have been put in charge of loading up 47 Windows 2003/2008 Print Servers with the latest Windows 7 64 bit print drivers for about 600 different printers. I have used this group to help me with the major task of unattended installations of Operating Systems so I was wondering if anyone has an idea on how this could be done using the unattended installation process. This would be only the drivers not the configuration of course, I am sure this is not as big a deal as I think it is and I was hoping someone out there might have an idea of how to accomplish this task.

I will be using 64 bit systems to load the drivers of course, 64 bit servers and vise versa. What I was thinking of doing is this (I have not tested this yet so please no vicious slamming)

Loading one up with everything I have and copying the Spool dir (after shutting off the spooler service) and coping it to the new server since I don't need any port configuration just the drivers. This will probably work for HPs but we use everything so this is why I am here. What is the best way to accomplish this task and not have to do 1000s of hrs in cleanup?

Thanks All

Forgotten

[Tripredacus]

Are these print servers existing systems or are you talking about new deployments?

[forgotten21]

existing printer with 32 bit only drivers on 32 bit print servers.

[forgotten21]

Pre-existing 32 bit print servers. Thank you for replying. Sorry about the confusion.

[allen2]

The way i see things:

- list all used printer drivers from the x86 existing server.

- find the MS certified x64 drivers for the new x64 2008R2 servers. If the drivers aren't certified, you'll need to test them extensively. Also some drivers might be incompatible with others.

- Install the drivers properly on one of the 2008R2 servers.

- create a printer queue for each driver and share it.

- map the printers queues (created at previous step) on the others 2008R2 servers using a script (vbs can easily handle this) then remove the printer queues still using a script.

This way only the drivers will be installed on the new servers.

As a side thing, if you feel like using printmig, don't !!! It won't handle new printer drivers.

You also relay on printbrm if you don't like the script thing.

[forgotten21]

I am gonna try this I will get back with the results. Thanks much!

[fizban2]

take a look at this tool

:\Windows\System32\spool\tools>PrintBrm.exe /?

PrintBrm -B|R|Q [-S <server>] -F <file> [-D <directory>] [-O FORCE] [-P ALL|ORIG] [-NOBIN] [-LPR2TCP] [-C <config file>] [-NO

ACL] [-?]

-B Backup the server to the specified file

-R Restore the configuration in the file to the server

-Q Query the server or the backup file

-S <server name> Target server

-F <file name> Target backup File

-D <directory> Unpack the backup file to (with -R) or repack a backup file from (with -B) the given directory

[cluberti]

Note that you will have issues with any non-standard print drivers that require additional services or registry entries not backed up, and could end up with a broken print server on the other end. Always test before migrating.