Group Policy Preferences Printers: Server 2008R2 Error 0x80070bc4 does not set default printer after a printer has been created

Question

Alright. After calling upon the almighty Google I have been unable to find a good solutions to this problem along with many other users. So I am turning to Server Fault for some support here.

I am in the process of moving my users off of Quest's Desktop Authority (DA) and on to Microsoft's Group Policy (GP) completely. A week ago we moved our printer policy from DA to GP. Everything was going swimmingly until some of my users started complaining that their default printer was not being configured. Specifically my users on our XenApp servers (Which run Microsoft Terminal Services). I am using item level targeting to choose which printers are assigned to users.

When delete the users printers and run gpupdate /force everything applies correctly, but when I have all of the printers connected already, then change my default printer, then run gpupdate /force, nothing happens.

Looking at the results of gpresults /h provides me with this error.

Result: Failure (Error Code: 0x80070bc4)

And looking in my logs presents this error:

The user 'HP600_PA - Default' preference item in the 'Printers {C125938A-E046-46CE-9908-F0ADDAB9B9C8}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x80070bc4 No printers were found.' This error was suppressed.

Google has provided a bunch of different solutions, most of which don't work except things like "Well, just remove all printers when a user logs off!" which isn't really acceptable because we have settings that users set on their printers that I don't want being removed every time they log off.

I have seen this issues discussed since 2012 and have yet to see a proper fix for it.

Links

• Crosspost on SpiceWorks
• Post on TechNet where the answer is basically: delete every printer at logoff.

Solution

I suspect that your GPO is saying it can't find the printer because the printer in question is already mapped. Change this GPO from Create to Update to correct that.

Comments

[HopelessN00b]

I suspect that your GPO is saying it can't find the printer because the printer in question is already mapped. Change this GPO from Create to Update to correct that. If that's not the problem, you might want to post the whole of the GPO in question to make it easier to diagnose.

[user235308]

Won't update replace my settings also? The GPO is just a GPP printers policy.

[HopelessN00b]

And Create won't replace your settings? Like I said, share the GPP in question. Otherwise it's a bunch of fumbling around in the dark.