Printers deployed through GPO not removed

  • Thread starter Thread starter ShawnTMaloney
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ShawnTMaloney

Hello,
I am using GPO's to deloy printers to Vista Business edition PC's. I
have a Win2k3 domain with the schema update. The printers are
deploying to the machines/users without issue. When I remove a printer
from the group policy, it is still being deployed. If I delete the
printer manually, do a "gpupdate /force" or reboot, the printer comes
back. I run the GPresults wizard, and see that the printer is being
deployed through a GPO. I check out the GPO, and there are no printers
listed for deployment. I have tried re-adding & Re-removing the
printer to the GPO, but no luck.

I found the registry keys to remove the printer connections, but I
don't want to do it that way, because removing the printer from the
group policy should remove it from the user's PC the next time they do
a gpupdate.

Anyone else seen this/have any suggestions?

Thanks,
-Shawn
 
In case anyone else is experiencing this issue... I spent 4 hours and
45 minutes on the phone with MS, and they told me it is a bug, and
they will be doing more research on it. I resume the call on Monday...
 
After spending a total of 9 hours on the phone with various techs...
we determined it's a bug, and think we may have found a workaround.
When I deployed the printers, I used a Vista PC, launched the GPMC.msc
console, edited the group policy and deployed the printer. The
printers deploy fine that way, but don't they don't remove when you
remove them from the GPO. It should work, and that's part of the
bug...

To work around it:
I installed the Print management console on one of my Win2k3 Std R2
SP2 servers, connected to the Win2k3 Std SP2 print server, right click
the printer, deploy with group policy and add it to the group policy.

Open the GPMC.msc, and add pushprinterconnections.exe (I had to copy
it from a Vista PC to the domain script location) as a startup or
logon script to the GPU I am using to deploy the printer. If it's a
per machine printer deploy, add as startup, per user, add as a logon
script. I'm only deploying to Vista machines, so according to all the
documentation the pushprinterconnections.exe shouldn't be necessary...
and that's the second half of the bug.

Once the printer has been redeployed, open GPMC.msc, edit the GPO,
browser to deployed printers, Right click the printer to be removed,
and select remove. (In the Print Management console, there is no way
to remove the printer from the GPO... unless, you have to go through
the deploy process, add it, and before you close out the window select
remove. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the "proper" method, but
the MS techs told me to remove it using the GPMC console)

I've redeployed the tenacious printer using the Win2k3 R2 Print
management console to the original GPO. I am going to wait a week or
so before I remove it again. I'll post the results.
 
Well... the work around listed above worked. I still see some
strange
behavior though... When I run the group policy results wizard, the
printer connection is still listed as being deployed, but the printer
is not actually installed on the user's computer.

Stick to using the print management console to deploy and remove
printers through group policy. Apparently, the Vista group policy
management console, deployed printer section is just for looks and
will not give predictable results. As per the MS tech, "Currently, as
it stands, there are no hotfixes for the symptoms that you are
experiencing. Whether this symptom will be classified as a bug, and a
future hotfix is developed, I am not in a position to say."
 
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