Network printer driver needs update
Hi, We have a 2 node server 2003 clustered file/print server. We have 4 groups of users of approx 50 members each with windows 7 pro laptops that had the printers installed for them last fall. This past monday we had a failover of the print cluster to the secondary node and then noticed that one of those user groups laptops would not print any more to the one network printer they point to. When highlighting the printer on the client's machine, the status displays printer needs updated driver, or something similar to that. We did logon as a domain admin and re-installed the printer from the server which brought down the driver again and now all are printing again, but why would a failover cause 1 of the groups of laptops require the driver be reinstalled? at least 2 of the printers are the same type and model.Thanks for any suggestions!
March 17th, 2010 8:56pm

This trouble can occur if the the printer drivers on the node are corrupted. In Windows Server 2003 clusters, the printer drivers are stored on the shared disk in a folder named "PrinterDrivers". When a new printer driver is installed to the virtual server, the driver is copied to the shared disk and to the node that owns the Spooler resource. The local nodes have an exact copy of the same drivers on the shared disk under the Windows_folder\System32\Spool\Drivers\GUID folder. If you meet this trouble again, you can try this link:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302539I hope this can help. John
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March 18th, 2010 1:14pm

Thanks for the response John, I'll certainly keep this in mind. I guess one thing that comes to mind is if the node has or had driver corruption wouldn't the issue occur across all the laptops? Not just a select group? This one really has me perplexed! I found one other post in another forum from an admin that had the same issue, a few select machines were affected, they however were not running the print server in a clustered environment, and they also have not found the cause.Anyway, thanks again for the post, guess we'll just have to wait it out and see if the issue comes back.
March 18th, 2010 4:57pm

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