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Two Printers Deployed via Group Policy - Same Drivers, Same Model, but different icons. The printer model is Toshiba e-STUDIO6550C. All the settings appear to be the same.

Has anyone experienced this before? Not an end of the world problem :) but very annoying, thanks!

NOTE: The two identical printers on the same machine, side by side, are showing different icons.

TheCleaner
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Brian Jackson
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  • Is the client OS the same? If so, are they both at the same SP and patch level? If the client OS is Windows 7 they can be configured to download device icons via Windows Updates. I suspect one of them is configured to do this and the other one isn't. – joeqwerty Dec 20 '12 at 16:00
  • Both of my own machines are Windows 7 x64, both are receiving the two printers via group policy but with different icons. None of them were added manually, by searching network or anything... but were both pushed by GP. The two identical printers on the same machine, side by side, are showing different icons. It must be a configuration issue somewhere... Just wondering where to look. I have scoured the printer settings and they both match. – Brian Jackson Dec 20 '12 at 16:05
  • If one of them is configured to retrieve and update device icons via Windows Update and the other isn't then that could explain why the icons are different. Have you checked that? – joeqwerty Dec 20 '12 at 16:11

3 Answers3

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Windows 7 can be configured to retrieve and update device icons via Windows Updates. If one of the computers is configured to do that and the other isn't then that could explain why the icons are different. To check to see if they're configured for this behavior go to Devices and Printers, right click the computer icon, select Device installation settings, and make sure they're both set to Automatically download drivers and icons.

joeqwerty
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    Joe - while I agree with you and upvoted, you missed his key sentence "The two identical printers on the same machine, side by side, are showing different icons." - it's not a matter of two different computers showing a different icon for a single printer. – TheCleaner Dec 20 '12 at 16:23
  • Yes sorry Joe I might not have explained that clear enough. Yes the one computer, has two same printer models, different IPs, same drivers, and yes under device installation settings it is checked to obtain the new device icons. – Brian Jackson Dec 20 '12 at 16:26
  • Gotcha. That info wasn't in the original question. Disregard my answer then. – joeqwerty Dec 20 '12 at 16:33
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One of the things that Windows uses to pick the icon is directly querying the printer for model information. How are your printers connected? If one is, for example, USB connected to the server and the other uses an IP port, then the USB connected printer can not be queried by the client.

Taking that a bit further, if the printers are IP based then settings on the printer or printer NIC might prevent the computer from querying it, or return a different response. Check all the NIC settings (including SNMP) and make sure the printers and printer NICs are on the same firmware version.

longneck
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The cache location is here: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Device Metadata\dmrccache you may look for the 2 devices via GUID there.

for instance: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Device Metadata\dmrccache\en-US\00e644cc-0b1e-4039-80b9-a8fe297d3897\DeviceStage\Device\en-US

is where the icon image is located for my Samsung printer.

Look for the proper GUIDs there for each printer. It's possible that one of them doesn't even have a "DeviceStage" folder, which may help you troubleshoot, since that would mean that the "Device Stage" functionality in Win 7 isn't getting correct info from the device to get the Meta data from MS on which icon set to use, what tasks are available for that specific device (like ordering supplies, contacting their support, etc. on a particular tab)

That should help you some, but you'll need to look at the properties and see if the Manufacturer, Model, Model #, etc. is correct between the two installed. If it isn't, then something on the one that is incorrect isn't setup on the printer itself correctly or on the print server if there is one.

Hope that helps.

TheCleaner
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