Deploying Printers to Computers vs. Users via GPO

Question

When I deploy a printer:

• to computers via GPO, it seems to deploy to Windows XP machines only.
• to users via GPO, it deploys to both Windows XP and Windows 7 machines.

When I look in the RSoP Snap-in, it shows the policy hitting the computer successfully and there are no errors in the Event Viewer.

Solution

Here's what you have to do to get Windows 7 to be printer friendly with a Windows 2003 domain/print server.

1. Load up Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 on your Windows 7 machine
2. Create a PolicyDefinitions folder in %systemroot%\sysvol\domain\policies\ on your domain controller.
3. From the Windows 7 machine, you want to copy everything in %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\ into \\\domain\sysvol\domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
4. You'll need to install the Group Policy Management Console from the Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off)
5. After that from the Group Policy Management Console on your Windows 7 computer, you'll want to create a new GPO for windows 7 machines and apply the following.

Computer configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Printers

Set the following options:

• Only use package point and print - disabled
• Package point and print - approved servers - disabled
• Point and print restrictions - disabled

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EDIT

I would also like to add I've had a lot of trouble with this and want this answer to be complete. I've had issues with users not being able to print randomly. It would remove the printer and when reading it from GPO we would see the following suppressed message:

The user 'printername' preference item in the 'Site-User-Preferences-Policy {Policy-ID}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x800706ba The RPC server is unavailable.' This error was suppressed.

When I would manually try to add it from the print server I would then have the message:

Connect to Printer

Windows cannot connect to the printer

Operation failed with error 0x0000002

After chasing this around for a few weeks, I found someone else had the problem. The issue is corrected the following Microsoft Hotfix:

A computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 intermittently cannot use a shared network printer to print.

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Update for Windows 7 SP1

Windows 7 SP1 includes this hotfix, so if you're having this problem with SP1 you need to keep digging. Took me a while to figure out, so thought I'd save others the trouble. I'll repost here if I figure out why this happens on SP1.

Comments

[SpacemanSpiff]

What functional level is your AD at?

[Untalented]

Will test this tonight. What does copying the PolicyDefinitions do?

[Nixphoe]

It adds the Windows 7 GPO settings to the domain. Otherwise it doesn't know how to apply them.

[Untalented]

Is this required even if you have a 2008 R2 DC (We have a mix)? I've never heard about this before.

[Nixphoe]

it has to do with the administration templates. To read more about it: microsoft.com/downloads/en/…

[Nixphoe]

I've been Understanding this more, And those admx files control the all the settings located under the Policies > Administrative Templates. With out those settings being copied over to that location, it wouldn't know how to apply those settings to the registry of your workstation. Looks like this is the "official" way to do it too. social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverGP/thread/…