Setting up printers in active directory

Question

I need some help setting up a printer in Active Directory. Specifically, deploying them via GPO. I want to have a computer associates with a specific shared computer so that anyone sitting there is able to use the printer.

How do I do this?

MDMarra · Answer 1 · 2012-02-21T23:13:50.723

5

You can do this a number of ways. The preferred (newest) method is to use Group Policy Preferences to do it. You just make a GPO that contains the right settings, link it to an OU, wait for a policy refresh (or force one) and you're done. Since the Shared Printer policy is a User policy, you'll need to enable Group Policy Lookback Mode in the GPO as well. This will allow User GPOs to apply to Computers.

If you need to get more granular, you can tinker with the security filtering on the GPO.

edited Feb 21 '12 at 23:13

answered Feb 21 '12 at 23:02

MDMarra

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Or even more granular: Use item-level targeting. We automatically map printers according to the client's IP address, it's delicious. – pauska Feb 22 '12 at 17:14
the Link to http://blogs.technet.com/b/grouppolicy/archive/2009/02/20/the-one-reason-to-use-gpp.aspx is down. – wurlog Jun 18 '12 at 14:59

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '12 at 23:14

I use Group Policy to achieve this. Using the PushPrinterConnections.exe startup script, I'll typically attach a printer GPO to an Organizational Unit whose computers need to access the printer.

In the example below, I have an OU and attach the "Operations Printers" GPO to it. The GPO maps the printer to the relevant PCs. In this case, the printer (comlsr) is defined on a dedicated file/print server named "file". So the resulting policy will map \\file\comlsr to PCs within the tagged OU.

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Setting up printers in active directory

2 Answers2