GPO for printers

[George K. A.]

I manage an active directory for a small school of about 200 students.
Clients use xp, DC's run 2003 std.

I want the students to be able to sit at any workstation, log on to their
account and have their printers available at any computer they use. Is
there any way, a gpo or something to have their printers show up wherever
they log on. The printers are either shared on a print server or have an HP
Jet Direct card with their own IP address.

Thanks.

 

[Jorge_de_Almeida_Pinto]

I manage an active directory for a small school of about 200
students.
Clients use xp, DC's run 2003 std.

I want the students to be able to sit at any workstation, log
on to their
account and have their printers available at any computer they
use. Is
there any way, a gpo or something to have their printers show
up wherever
they log on. The printers are either shared on a print server
or have an HP
Jet Direct card with their own IP address.

Thanks.

The (shared) printer connections are user based and are stored in the
user profile. This is true for printer connection created by the
user/student. If you want these to be available you could use roaming
profiles so the students always use their same profile.

Do you mean: is there a way to distribute printer connections to the
students using a GPO? If that is your question you will need to wait
until Windows Server 2003 R2 has been released and then use the Print
Management Console (PMC)

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

George,

Yes, there is a way to do this. As Jorge told you, when you 'install' a
printer you are doing it for the user account object ( or, profile, as Jorge
correctly stated ) on that computer. So, if you sit down at computer
'LSLABWS01' and log on using the domain user account 'gka' and the 'install'
an HP LJ4100 only the user account 'gka' will have that specific printer
installed. So, were I to then sit down at that some computer and log on
using the domain user account 'cws' I would not have a printer 'HP LJ4100'
installed. I would have to do that myself. But, like you, once I do that
on that machine it will pretty much always be there.

So, how do I do what you are trying to do? I think it was Bruce Sanders who
came up with a nice way to do this using the printui.dll trick. Please look
at the following link:

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterAllUsers.htm

There you have it!

Now, no matter who logs on to 'LSLABWS01' will have that printer. Special
note: if you ever need to remove that printer then you would need to do so
using this method, only you would use the /gd switch.....

Does this help you?

--
Cary W. Shultz
Roanoke, VA 24012
Microsoft Active Directory MVP

http://www.activedirectory-win2000.com
http://www.grouppolicy-win2000.com