Remove old printers from AD

[PL]

A printer that's no longer there shows up in the Add Printer Wizard.
The printer used to be on a workstation that's been long ago removed
but the printer still shows up in the list of published printers. How
do I remove it?

Also, in ADUC, isn't the Printers "folder" supposed to show all
published printers? Mine doesn't, should that be cause for concern?

Thanks,
Peter.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Printers don't show up in AD that I have ever seen unless you have ticked
"show users and computers as containers". The newest version of Server 2003
called R2 now finally has a print Manager that lets you install printers via
Group Policy.

Cheers,
Lara

 

[Paul Williams [MVP]]

It can't have been long ago removed, as printer pruning cleans up printers
pretty efficiently. Unless you've disabled printer pruning.

Anyway, fire up ADSIEDIT.MSC and expand the computer in question. There
will be a print queue object as a child of that computer. Delete it.

 

[PL]

The computer in question does not show up in ADSIEdit because the
computer itself has been removed a long time ago and I mean several
months. Obviously the printer wasn't removed before the computer was
and the computer wasn't properly disjoined from the domain but crashed
and its account was then deleted from AD. Somehow the printer stayed
behind.

 

[Paul Williams [MVP]]

The printQueue object is not a child of that computer. Search for the
printer when ADU&C "view computers and users as containers" mode is enabled
and look at the object tab. This will show you the location of the object.
Expand that and then delete the object.

 

[PL]

I can find the printer no problem when doing a search on the "Entire
Directory", however, I can not view its properties ("Properties for
this item are not available") and when trying to delete the object
from the ADUC Find results window, I get the following error:

"Windows cannot delete object COMPNAME-PRINTERNAME
CNF:654654-654654-645654-64654 because:
Directory object not found"

The numbers after CNF above are made up, I didn't think they were
relevant to this discussion, but I do have them in case I need to do a
search for the string somewhere. The COMPNAME is the name of the
computer where the printer used to be, this computer no longer exists.

Thanks,
Peter.

 

[PL]

Any other suggestions, Paul?

Thanks,
Peter.