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Managing printers on a W2k PDC with GPO/logon scripts


sys6x

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Hi,

I'm setting up a new AD tree organization and now using GPOs (the company never used them before) with a W2k Server PDC.

In my GPOs, there are scripts running to attach a printer to the computer and set it by default. Everything is working fine until I have this user that has an exception. So, I need to set another printer by default, in the user logon script. The thing is..it adds the printer but it doesn't set it by default... I guess you can't set more than once a default printer in ALL the logon scripts?

I'm using .cmd batch scripts linked to a .vbs WSH script

How would you do this? I'm sure I could give more infos but dunno what...ask questions if needed!

Thanks

Edited by sys6x
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OK, found out what to do finally...I don't define any default printer in the script...just add them and then the user (or me during the setup) will select the default printer.

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OK finally it doesn't work...

here is how I'm adding a printer via GPO with a vbs file :

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colPrinters = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * From Win32_Printer Where Local = TRUE")

If colPrinters.Count = 0 Then
Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
objNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\SERVER\PRINTER"
objNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\SERVER\PRINTER"
End If

The problem now is that I can't even use the printer (it adds it, no problem). It doesn't print a single page (but no error message) but when I want to access the configuration/properties of the printer, I'm getting this :

Function address 0x3c6feed caused a protection fault. (exception code 0xc0000005) Some or all property pages(s) may not be displayed."

A guess is that the printer is on the W2k PDC and the client computer is on XP and then it can't get XP drivers so it use 2k's, which causes this error. Is there a way to get the W2k PDC to be able to push WXP drivers?

Thanks again

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Lucky guess... :)

Actually...I'm doing a side job for a friend and he's got a bunch of those on his network. Same situation...Win2k Server and WinXP clients. The drivers for them are horrid. We both did a little research and found you can use the HP 4050 drivers. It helped in his situation some but the print spooler is still acting up every few days (which is better than a few times a day). Fortunately we're in the process of setting up a new server that's running Server 2003 R2.

HP also has their new Universal Print Driver but I haven't tried it yet.

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Yeah I thought about trying the UPD...but then I found out it was just this lil' printer..not all of 'em

I guess you tried installing/upgrading the drivers with XP's? That's what I did and it work'd

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Yeah, we tried putting the latest drivers on the 2000 server. The 1320 drivers are just sloooooooow. Things sped up quite a bit when it was changed to use the 4050 driver though.

Edited by nmX.Memnoch
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