We are using Windows 7 32-bit in a lab environment where everyone logs onto a new profile each time. Our printer server is Win 2008 R2 64-bit. Printers are globally installed on the computer (printui /ga /n\\server\printer). Sometimes (20% of time) no printer shows up and devices and printers is empty with no printers. If the student reboots the machine and logs in again the printer often will show up as expected. While the printers are missing, if you manually map to the print server and double click on the printer to install it you get the error "Windows cannot connect to the printer. The specified port is unknown." Printers are HP p4015 and using PS Universal Drivers.

Hi, Are you currently using the script to add the printer when Windows 7 start up? Do you use the mandatory user profile in your environment? If so, I suggest you deploy the printer by Group Policy Preferences which applies to per machine in your environment: GP Preferences: Add a new printer, set as default - Group Policy Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs Group Policy Preferences: Deploy Printer Settings - Group Policy Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs Hope it helps. Alex ZhaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

This is not set to run at startup - the global printers were setup in the windows image before deployment. We are not using a mandatory user profile. Users get settings from the default profile. We had previously tried using GP settings to push the printers but have had many similar problems. Sometimes the printers would show up and sometimes they wouldn't (maybe 50% of time worked). Because of the mixed results we changed to scripts that ran at login time - and this worked about 80% of the time at first. Set wshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") PrinterPath = "\\server\printer" PrinterDriver = "HP Universal Printing PS (v5.1)" WshNetwork.AddwindowsPrinterConnection PrinterPath, PrinterDriver WshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\server\printer" Set wshNetwork = Nothing Sometimes it would work but other times there were errors such as "the specified port in unknown." Setting a global printer directly into the image before deployment is our latest effort to get these printers to the students but again we are getting errors.

This is not set to run at startup - the global printers were setup in the windows image before deployment. We are not using a mandatory user profile. Users get settings from the default profile. We had previously tried using GP settings to push the printers but have had many similar problems. Sometimes the printers would show up and sometimes they wouldn't (maybe 50% of time worked). Because of the mixed results we changed to scripts that ran at login time - and this worked about 80% of the time at first. Set wshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") PrinterPath = "\\server\printer" PrinterDriver = "HP Universal Printing PS (v5.1)" WshNetwork.AddwindowsPrinterConnection PrinterPath, PrinterDriver WshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\server\printer" Set wshNetwork = Nothing Sometimes it would work but other times there were errors such as "the specified port in unknown." Setting a global printer directly into the image before deployment is our latest effort to get these printers to the students but again we are getting errors.

I had mentioned about this in one our previous blogs. From our experience we have seen use of printui /ga result in some inconsistent behavior. http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2009/02/06/deploying-printers-and-print-drivers-remotely.aspx "Although it is possible to add per-machine printer connections using the /ga switch, this can result in some unpredictable printing behaviors and is not recommended." Since you are on Win7/w2k8, the recommended option is the builtin GPO based deployment methods Look under Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Deployed Printers If you are using scripts, make sure that the network is up before the scripts execute. Is it just the printers failing to map, or are there network drives that also fail to map? This will tell us if its a network issue. Also in couple of cases we had we had found a corrupt PRINT hive to be the cause of the issue. We had to import a clean Print registry HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print after which things were back to normal. Do you have too many drivers installed to possibly cause such an issue? Can you try resetting the Print hive on a couple of PCs and see if it resolves? Did you notice if all the missing printers belonged to a single driver or similar trends? Does all users get affected at the same time? Sumesh P - Microsoft Online Community Support

Hello, I am a tech and need help with something along the same issue. We are trying to get windows 2008 R2 64 bit server to GPP push out multiple printers to certain computer names. The problems we are facing is how to configure certain printers to be defaults on certain computers but all computers will still show all the printers to select from just in case the defaulted one goes down. Also I am running into problems when trying to use a Dell 5230n driver that is 64 bit (which we also added a 32 bit driver to), when this printer is configured with this driver and is gpp pushed to the windows 7 client... the printer does not appear. but when we set the printers driver to dell open driver pcl 5, it reappears. Please help!