KACE Product Support

Here is one method I have found to work - after you login it takes a few seconds before showing up so give it a little time to run.

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\SERVERNAME\PRINTER SHARE NAME"

Example:

rundll32 printui.dll PrintUIEntry /ga /n "\\ps0\Lab Color"

Dennis

Yep, we rely on the PrintUI commands including /ga. Here's the documentation:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/2/c/82cffcfa-56f6-4fc3-bfa5-80cd84793871/PrintUIUsersGuide.doc

Note one thing: if you add per-machine printers using /ga, you have to remove them from the machine with /gd; a user can't remove the per-machine printer from the Windows user interface. Sande

This method works great until you have to make a change to the print server that would effect client connections. I have found that if the driver changes on the print server, you need to change the share name of the printer, apply this change, then change it back to the original share name for the driver update to deploy to already connected clients.

In several years of using the PrintUI techniques with our Windows Server for printing, I've never seen this problem. When I update a driver on the server, the client computers get the new driver as they check in. I don't have to change the share or anything else to make this happen.With Windows 7 clients, I did have to set a registry value in the client computers so standard users would not be prompted to update the driver.

The biggest problem I've seen is this: as much as possible, I'm using universal or global print drivers from the major manufacturer, which means one driver across most printer models. But when I update this global driver on one printer, all the other printers than use the same driver also switch to the new driver at the same time. So that means I cannot test a new driver: put it on one printer and it applies to all of them. Despite this, I think the global/universal print drivers are a great innovation, and they have reduced the support load substantially. I'm even using the Xerox Global Print Driver on an HP printer too old for the HP Universal Printing Driver, a LaserJet 5M!. Sande

Do a search for Printer Migrator from Microsoft, not supported with Windows 7, but I have seen it work.