client access to a shared printer with group policy

[Charlie]

SMB printer shares are just like mapped drives - they are
on a per-profile basis. You installed the printer but
nobody else will have it in their profile. I have never
seen a GP setting that gives everyone the same printer
and I'm not sure why. Why not just have users connect to
the server and double click the printer to install it.
That's all it takes. If you're using Active Directory
they can just search for the printer by name and find it
immediately without even having to know the name of the
server. This solution assumes that the users aren't in
the Guests Group (Guests don't get to keep their profiles
after they log out). If your users don't keep their
profiles they would have to do this every time they log
on. If they move from machine to machine, of course they
would have to do it at each machine but it's still not
that big a deal. You could put a shortcut to the print
share on the Desktop in the All Users profile and
everyone that logs on would see it.
I also have a lab with 25 workstations and a print server.
Potentially over 500 students use them. When they log on
they are in the Guests Group so we had to use a
complicated method which involves a registry hack and
more. If you want me to give the instructions for that
let me know, but you may find it more trouble than it's
worth.

 

[techie]

I ended up using a logon script that runs through group policy. The
script maps the shared printer when the user logs on to the domain.
It works great! The only down side is that it takes a little longer
for them to log in. Thanks for the info though......

Chris