Hello all, this issue is driving us crazy. We have a Windows domain that is still 2000. All domain controllers are 2003 server. One of the domain controllers is also a printer server that has two dozen various printers shared on it. We have several hundred XP Pro workstations and 25 Windows 7 Pro workstations. End users do not have admin rights but are allowed to install printers. Here is the issue: If we install a new printer to the print server, or change a driver, IP or host name of an existing printer, the first time after this change any Windows 7 PC that tries to print is prompted to install a printer driver. Even if the change on the server had nothing to do with the printer trying to be used. If the user has multiple printers, it is only the first printer that was asked to print after the change that prompts to have a driver installed. The other printers will work fine. When the user clicks the ‘install driver’ button, the install asks for admin rights to do it even though it did not need admin rights to install the printer to begin with. The XP machines show no sign of this issue. We do have plans to update the domain to 2K8, but that is still a few months off. I am not positive that has anything to do with this. Any suggestions?

Take a look at this TechNet article which provides a solution to the admin-problem and makes the drivers install silently: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753269.aspxBlogging about Windows for IT pros at www.theexperienceblog.com

Thanks for the reply Andreas. That article does talk about part of the problem. However our Group Policy does not have the "point and print restrictions" policy under Computer Configuration, and as the article mentions Windows 7 ignores this policy under User Configuration. We have set it to disabled, but it is not stopping the prompts. It turns out the XP PCs are updating their drivers (for no reason) but the policy is just not prompting them. The XP machines are experiencing slowness while the driver re-install is happening in the background which is also bad. Either way, setting this policy is just a workaround. The real question we cannot figure out is why are the drivers trying to re-install to begin with? Thanks again for the reply!

You're welcome. I do realize it is a workaround but the fact is that this particular setting Point and print restrictions exist in every domain with Vista or Windows 7 machines as it just solves this problem to start with (i.e. users seeing the "install driver" dialogue). You must enable this setting for it to work as expected.Blogging about Windows for IT pros at www.theexperienceblog.com

Take a look at this TechNet article which provides a solution to the admin-problem and makes the drivers install silently: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753269.aspxBlogging about Windows for IT pros at www.theexperienceblog.com