GPO printer deployment Bug in Win XP sp3

[Synapse120]

I have been running windows server 2003 r2 printer management for about 1
month now, and my Group policy printer deployment has been working perfectly,
until SP3 was installed. After adding SP3 to our image new clients do not
get the printer deployment as SP2 clients are. Uninstallation of SP3 will
result in a sucessful deployment of the printer to the same computer, with no
other system changes. MS refuses to open a grace case to view the issue,
which i have reproduced in several enviroments, including Server 2008 with XP
SP3 clients. I hope this post finds its way to MS employee on the dev team.

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

run pushprinterconnections with the log enabled

Description: Reads Deployed Printer Connection settings from Group Policy,
and deploys/removes printer connections as needed.

Syntax: PushPrinterConnections
Parameters: -log

If -log is specified on the command line:
A per user debug log file will be written to %temp%.
A per machine debug log will be written to %windir%\temp.

This utility is for use in machine startup or user logon scripts, and should
not be run from the command line. See your Windo
ws Server 2003 R2 documentation for details.

C:\>



--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Synapse120]

I have the logs enabled, but none are produced, checking the eventlogs it
doesn't even process, but with SP3 uninstalled it works fine. event log
below:

Could not execute the following script PushPrinterConnections.exe. The
system cannot find the file specified.
..

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

That explains why you are not getting any deployed printers.

Now you need to figure out why the file is not found.


I always execute the file from a remote path or from the sysvol share.
Where are you storing this file?

You had made a comment that you created a new image with SP3.
Pushprinterconnections.exe is not included in XP, you would need to add this
to the OS image if you are running this locally.


Execute the file locally with logging and verify you get the connections


Please let me know if you get this figured out. I did forward this to the
group that works on XP service packs.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Synapse120]

The file is being stored in the sysvol\domainname\policies\<GPO
ID>\startup\machine.

The permissions to the folder are correct.

This is the same location that my current SP2 pc's are running successfully.
You mentioned the script cannot be run from the command prompt, how would i
run it locally to see if it works.

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

The exe absolutely can be run from a command prompt

Only user printer connections will be deployed. If you are deploying
"machine" connections there are some extra steps to run in system context.

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Synapse120]

I am deploying strictly in a "Machine" connections, as a background to the
GPO it is only applied to a Security group that contains mahine OU's. Has
anyone been able to repro this in your test enviroments.

What are the other steps needed to run i na system context?

 

[Alan Morris [MSFT]]

you will need to use the AT command to launch the exe in system context

open a cmd window

create a local directory and copy the pushprinterconnections.exe to this
location

cd to this location. You must specify the full path to the file even though
it's local on the machine in the same directory


C:\PPC>at 14:33 c:\ppc\PushPrinterConnections.exe -log
Added a new job with job ID = 1

C:\PPC>at
Status ID Day Time Command Line
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Today 2:33 PM
c:\ppc\PushPrinterConnections.exe -log

at 2:33 the exe launches and the ppcmachine.log is created in %windir%\temp


I'm WAY past XP. Send me contents of the log

thanks

--
Alan Morris
Windows Printing Team
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base here:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.