Updating print drivers on a shared printer queue

[ApeosMan]

Hi,

I'd please like some feedback/advise on this. I have customers who want to print to the same print queue they were using with their old printer, e.g. 'Printer1'. So on the server I'd go to the shared printer queue and update the driver files to the new printer model. Now often I'll get issues like default settings not being pushed down correctly to the client computers, blank pages printing, wrong colors, fonts or nothing printing at all. I can only imagine there is some sort of corruption or confusion happening behind the scenes in the windows print system. I mainly get these issues when updating to a sightly newer model than the previous printer, it seems the windows print system gets confused with what files it should be using. Sometimes it's just not possible to completely remove a driver package from a server, as other printer queues may still be using it. Also you usually have to remove the driver package from the client computers too, to stop issues on their end.

I always recommend creating a new printer queue, but some customers want to use the same printer queue name they were using before and don't care about my advise and point the finger at me even when I warned them.

Any feedback would be appreciated

Thanks

[Choro1dal]

Re: Updating print drivers on a shared printer queue

I used to have similar issues when updating drivers on older Windows operating systems (2K/XP/2003), particularly if they were shared and published in Active Directory (AD).

To get round the issue I would create my new print queue calling it 'New Printer 1'. but not sharing it. I would then ensure there were no jobs processing in the old queue, delete it, restart the print spooler service and force an AD replication. After the replication is complete I would rename 'New Printer 1' to 'Printer 1', share it, set the printing defaults, list in AD, restart the spooler service and replicate AD again.

It took an extra 10-15 minutes compared to just updating the original drivers but saved loads of grief in the long run.

[ApeosMan]

Re: Updating print drivers on a shared printer queue

I used to have similar issues when updating drivers on older Windows operating systems (2K/XP/2003), particularly if they were shared and published in Active Directory (AD).

To get round the issue I would create my new print queue calling it 'New Printer 1'. but not sharing it. I would then ensure there were no jobs processing in the old queue, delete it, restart the print spooler service and force an AD replication. After the replication is complete I would rename 'New Printer 1' to 'Printer 1', share it, set the printing defaults, list in AD, restart the spooler service and replicate AD again.

It took an extra 10-15 minutes compared to just updating the original drivers but saved loads of grief in the long run.

Thanks for the info
Though I don't know if this would be the best approach if the print server hosted a dozen or so busy print queues, your approach would be great for a small business server. I suppose another more difficult way would be to write a script that would run during the boot process of users PC's which removed the old print queue and driver files associated with it and then added the new print queue with the new driver files.

Does anybody else have issues like this?

Thanks

[ivovb]

I would like to say something about removing old print drivers. You have to go to server properties and remove driver from there in order to remove all of connected files. Herewith you will have clean system - no old files.

BR

[Moza]

Hi,

I'd please like some feedback/advise on this. I have customers who want to print to the same print queue they were using with their old printer, e.g. 'Printer1'. So on the server I'd go to the shared printer queue and update the driver files to the new printer model. Now often I'll get issues like default settings not being pushed down correctly to the client computers, blank pages printing, wrong colors, fonts or nothing printing at all. I can only imagine there is some sort of corruption or confusion happening behind the scenes in the windows print system. I mainly get these issues when updating to a sightly newer model than the previous printer, it seems the windows print system gets confused with what files it should be using. Sometimes it's just not possible to completely remove a driver package from a server, as other printer queues may still be using it. Also you usually have to remove the driver package from the client computers too, to stop issues on their end.

I always recommend creating a new printer queue, but some customers want to use the same printer queue name they were using before and don't care about my advise and point the finger at me even when I warned them.

Any feedback would be appreciated

Thanks

The only reason you should get issues like this is if the client doesnt have permissions to change or install a printer also some manufacturers dont push out default settings form the server unless the driver is deleted and re-installed. If a customer has multiple users using multiple print queues it would be a nightmare to create new printers and you shouldn't need too.

The question you need to be asking is how does the customer push out printers to their users ?

If they use log on scripts then after making changes to the server users will need to log off and back on to apply changes

If they use group policies then you just need to force a policy update in a users PC after changing the server.

Finally if they dont use either of them its the long walk roung each PC deleting and adding printer.

REMEMBER any of these methods require the user to have the permission to add or change a printer. If you ever get problems try logging onto the PC as an administrator and adding the printer after that the user should be able to log on and user the printer with the new driver

[ApeosMan]

Re: Updating print drivers on a shared printer queue

I would like to say something about removing old print drivers. You have to go to server properties and remove driver from there in order to remove all of connected files. Herewith you will have clean system - no old files.

BR

Yeah doing that on the server is simple enough, that's if the old print driver files are not still in use by another print queue. Also you'd have to walk around to all the client computers and remove the old driver files too, sometimes just deleting the old printer queue is not enough to delete the old driver files off the system.