Controlling printer driver installation

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Guest

I am using windows 2000 terminal services. At the moment, whenever a user
connects, terminal services automatically installs a printer driver for the
users printer if it is a standard windows driver. I do not want this to
happen. I want to decide which drivers are installed. I followed the
recomendations from article "q331055" However, this does not seem to work. I
use a standard universal driver that is causing a problem with one printer. I
want only this driver to be install on my servers. Thanks for the help. Dave
 
Just to be clear, i want to have my universal driver installed as well as the
driver of the printer that is not working properly with my universal driver.
Dave
 
What universal driver (are you using a 3rd party program like ThinPrint or
ScrewDrivers)?

To elaborate, when a user creates an RDP session and has their printer set
to auto-create, the server will automatically add the printer to the users
session, if there is a matching built-in driver. The built-in drivers are as
safe as they come, so I wouldn't disable this, unless you're using a 3rd
party printing program (mentioned above). There is a user right "Prevent
users from installing printer drivers", which when checked will prevent users
from installing drivers manually, or via automatic update (i.e. their 2000/XP
based client has a newer driver than that of the server, which would update
the server driver if this setting is not enabled)

http://www.workthin.com/tsp.htm

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://www.workthin.com
 
I am using EOL Universal Printer which is working for all my printers except
for a label printer from Zebra. If i allow windows drivers to be used, I have
duplicate printers to choose from. One with its actual windows driver and
another with the universal printer driver. This is why I want to disable use
of the windows drivers except for the Zebra. I activated the option to
Prevent users from installing printer drivers, but windows still installs
it's drivers. This is what I want to control. Thank you for your response.
 
You can either remove the zebra driver or map it to a null printer via user
defined inf file. I'm surprised a printing program doesn't have this option.

Instead of mapping to specific driver, you'd do:

"Requested Printer Driver" = ""

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://www.workthin.com
 
I am sorry for the misunderstanding. I will try to be more clear on my
question. How do I manually decide which drivers to be used on a terminal
server? Example: allow HP Deskjet, HP Deskjet 500, Hp Laserjet 4, Hp Laserjet
2100, Zebra 2844. Block all other printers from mapping to the client.
Dave
 
There is no easy way, without use of a 3rd party printing program that has
this option. I know in Citrix Metframe (not specifically pa printing
program, but has a lot of printing specific features) you can do just this.

I would ask EOL if their software can do this, otherwise you're stuck
manually mapping every printer driver you don't want used to a null printer
driver. This is not reasonable, because we're talking about thousands of
drivers. I suppose you could physically remove the built-in drivers (except
the ones you want) , but I wouldn't even venture to do this.
 
Thanks you very much for the info so far. I appreciate it. hat is the effect
of mapping drivers to a null printer? Does this still allow a client to print?

Dave
 
What mapping a printer driver to a null driver (an absense of a driver) does
is causes a printer to NOT be autocreated, i.e. if the server has printer
driver "Manufacturer XYX 123" and you don't want autocreated RDP printers to
use this driver, you could do:

"Manufacturer XYX 123" = ""

In a user defined Inf file. This is a solution for for one, or a few
printers, bothing you'd want to do for every printer. ONce again, I'd
contact EOL, and see what they say you could do with ntheir software to solve
your problem.

http://www.workthin.com/tsp.htm
http://www.printingsupport.com

Patrick Rouse
MIcrosoft MVP - Terminal Server
http://www.workthin.com
 
First of all, Thanks again for all the help. I have found 2 solutions for my
problem.
1 - I modified the permissions on ntprint.inf amd ntprint.pnf. I am the only
one who has permissions to view this file. All other permissions were
deleted. Now I am the only one who can install drivers!
2 - I found this option after. With this, you install all the drivers that
you want and then change the key. After the registry key is modified, no
drivers will be installed.
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Providers\LanMan Print
Services\Servers
Value: AddPrinterDrivers = 0
Value Type: REG_DWORD.
 
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