Make a network Printer Machine Specific instead of Profile Specifi

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Guest

I work in a school. Each lab has at least one Network Printer. I Use
Professional in the labs on an NT Server.

Students move from lab to lab.

I need to set up printers on the machines that are accessable to anyone who
logs into that machine.

As it is the printer is setup under a user account and is only available to
that user. The next user that logs in has to set the printer up all over
again.

HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!
 
Lucky, lucky you -- you're about to discover the "joys" of printui.dll.
(Which is to say: the good news for you is that there is a way to do
it. The bad news for you is it is printui.dll.)

Open a CMD prompt and type this command (which IS case-sensitive,
so copy/paste might be a good idea.)

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /?

This gives you a summary of the (endless) switches you can give to
PrintUIEntry. You might paste this and print it -- you'll likely be using it a
fair bit.

The one switch you are most interested in is /ga, which adds a machine-global
printer. The command you will use will end up being something like this:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /n\\server\printer ...

To get rid of a machine global printer you have to run the command
with /gd -- you cannot delete it from the printer list directly.

You only need to do this command once, although I've never
seen any harm from putting it in a startup or login script and re-running it.

Again, keep in mind that dll entry point names are case-sensitive.
You have to type the commands exactly.

Also, I've found that there are some interactions (good and bad) when
roaming profiles interact with global printers that are on some machines
and not others. If you are using roaming profiles you should test
carefully.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.
 
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