How to remove stale printers from Active Directory?

Question

Our Windows Server 2003 print server crashed, so we set up a new one. All of the printers were configured to be listed in the directory (Active Directory). But now each printer is appearing twice, because the stale record from the old server is still there. How do I remove the stale records?

Solution 1

There is no need to manually un-publish stale printers from Active Directory.

In most cases, the printers published to Active Directory will be automatically pruned after a certain interval according to the settings defined in Group Policy. These are applied per-computer, so just check what policy is being applied to the print server machine. The specific policies are detailed in this Microsoft Support article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234270

In my case, the printers disappeared after approximately 24 hours. Thanks to joeqwerty for tipping me off to this solution. I am still wondering how to manually unpublish printers for more immediate effect though.

Solution 2

Check the pruning settings in your GPO.