samba - Oct 2005 - how do you manage printers on workstations?

How do you manage printers on Windows workstations?

What I mean, suppose you have many classrooms, different printers (which 
sometimes change) in these classroms - how do you manage which 
workstation (or a group of them) will use which printer?


So far I've been using WPKG for that - as I described here: 
http://wpkg.org/wiki/index.php/Printer_configuration


But somehow I feel it isn't the easiest and most intuitive way - it is 
basically running:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /q /y /ga /in /n \\server\kyocera

as a domain administrator when machine is booted, and then in a netlogon 
script when a user logs in.

In other ways, I'm looking for an easier way to do it :)


-- 
Tomek

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Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> How do you manage printers on Windows workstations?
> 
> What I mean, suppose you have many classrooms, different printers (which
> sometimes change) in these classroms - how do you manage which
> workstation (or a group of them) will use which printer?
Run

	rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /?

and look for the details of setting default printers
or adding/deleting printer connections.

You could also refer to the con2prt.exe tool in the NT
resource kit.




cheers, jerry
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Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> How do you manage printers on Windows workstations?
> 
> What I mean, suppose you have many classrooms, different printers (which
> sometimes change) in these classroms - how do you manage which
> workstation (or a group of them) will use which printer?
> 
> 
> So far I've been using WPKG for that - as I described here:
> http://wpkg.org/wiki/index.php/Printer_configuration
> 
> 
> But somehow I feel it isn't the easiest and most intuitive way - it is
> basically running:
> 
> rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /q /y /ga /in /n \\server\kyocera
> 
> as a domain administrator when machine is booted, and then in a netlogon
> script when a user logs in.
> 
> In other ways, I'm looking for an easier way to do it :)
Doh!  I should read the entrie message first.  Sorry.  Ignore
my previous mail.  I just saw wpkg.  What exactly about this
don't you like ?  Managing printer connections in a logon script
is pretty simple.  What are you looking to simplify?




cheers, jerry
====================================================================Alleviating
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> How do you manage printers on Windows workstations?
> 
> What I mean, suppose you have many classrooms, different 
> printers (which 
> sometimes change) in these classroms - how do you manage which 
> workstation (or a group of them) will use which printer?
> 
> 
> So far I've been using WPKG for that - as I described here: 
> http://wpkg.org/wiki/index.php/Printer_configuration
> 
> 
> But somehow I feel it isn't the easiest and most intuitive 
> way - it is 
> basically running:
> 
> rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /q /y /ga /in /n \\server\kyocera
> 
> as a domain administrator when machine is booted, and then in 
> a netlogon 
> script when a user logs in.
> 
> In other ways, I'm looking for an easier way to do it :)
I'm assuming here that you're trying to get around having to connect to
the
printer as an admin so that the driver loads.  I would love to find a
no-intervention way of making this happen myself.  I have found that there
is a local security flag you can flip which will allow users to install
printer drivers, the side effect being that they could possibly change
'any'
driver.  The tedious part is that you must do this on every machine once.  

I guess you just have to pick your poison... Do it a hard way every time and
know that the users still are locked down or loosen the reigns a bit and not
worry about it every time.  Your call.