Assign printers by GPO?

[Bob]

Is it possible to assign printers by GPO on an OU basis?
We use roaming profiles and every time we have a new user, we have to visit and install the various printers into their profile for
them.

This means they have to be there and logged in, if we do it as local admin, they don't see the printers when they log on.
Since there are on average 5 printers near to any user, and they want them all, this is a right time waster.

I would have thought you could set up OUs per floor/room or whatever, add the user's OU into them and apply a GPO. Then if a user
changes department, simply move the account and their old printers will be replaced with the new ones.
Our server team say that this can't be done, are they right?
If not, can anyone suggest how to do this properly?
Bob

 

[Kevin Longley]

There is a couple different approaches you could use. First if the users
generally use the same computer or work in the same department you could do
the following:

Create Ad groups for printer assignments and populate with user accounts
Use the ifmember w2k utility to test for user group membership
The assign printers using the con2prt w2k utility
all this can be done using logon scripts

Example:

REM==========================
ifmember "PRINTGR1"
if errorlevel 1 goto RINTGR1

goto :END


RINTGR1
con2prt /c \\comp1\opt45
con2prt /cd \\comp2\hpclr1

goto :END

:END

REM==========================

I use something like the above routine in my environment by calling within a
logon script another bat file that tests for group membership and then
assigns printers. This allows me to control printer assignments from one
location (AD) and means I don't have to visit computers to assign printers.
There is an additional switch you can use with the con2prt utility which
will also delete all networked printers before assigning new printers.

Now if you have roaming users who work in different departments this will
not work. In that case you need to assign printers based on computer
location. For that you would need to look at some 3rd party scripting tools
such as winbatch.

Is it possible to assign printers by GPO on an OU basis?
We use roaming profiles and every time we have a new user, we have to

visit and install the various printers into their profile for

them.

This means they have to be there and logged in, if we do it as local

admin, they don't see the printers when they log on.

Since there are on average 5 printers near to any user, and they want

them all, this is a right time waster.

I would have thought you could set up OUs per floor/room or whatever, add

the user's OU into them and apply a GPO. Then if a user