Hi,
I've some bizarre problems when deploying printers, so I just hope you can give me few hints on where or what to check here.
We've one domain, 2 DC (older, physical dc is 2003 and vm one as 2008r2).
We've 2 print servers (2008R2) and a new one i'm creating from scratch, 2012R2.
Everything but the new 2012R2 print server was managed by external people so I basically have no idea of what's been done there, just have faith it's somehow working.
Older print servers have about 150 printers each one, and we've hundeds of GPO in our DCs (we've more than 4000 client computers to control and about 40000 users in our DC, so it's not easy to make some steps/decisions).
Now, the problem (mainly noticed on the 2008 servers):
When I change to a GPO that deploys printers to our clients, operations such as adding a printer or changing a driver usually is 'Ok', butsometimes seems like GPO aren't applied at all on clients. Spooler on clients start crashing (win7 clients show green progress bar and never show printers, win 8 crashes spooler process) and so on. Doing a gpupdate says everything is ok, but changes aren't applied.
Funniest thing is when I try to remove a printer from deploying (for example, for problems with current driver on that printer). I remove it from GPO either from 'Deploy by group policy' context menu at printmanagement.msc, or editing printer connections on GPO. No matter how I do this, seems like a local, cached copy of the GPO keeps in client computer, so I get printer even if removed, and later if I deploy it again, I get two or even tree copies of same printer! (or if I remove printer from server, clients show me a ghost printer since it doesn't exists anymore!).
I believe this problem has been hanging for months or years, but not until now people has decided to start using print servers seriously and they were using printers locally, so the problem is now showing in full splendor.
Also, as last but not least, want to say that the way GPOs deploy printers is:
- Deploy printer per machine
- Same GPO is used for both older XP and new Win7 and Win8 clients, so GPO executes pushprinterconnections.
I was thinking in redoing all (over 150) printer deployment GPO using GPP instead, but while there are these problems (and where we still have XP) won't be able to do that, so any help would be appreciated.
Thanks