General discussion
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Topic
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Install network printer for all XP users
LockedWe have school labs with Windows XP Professional PCs that are used by many students throughout the year. Each PC accumulates dozens of user accounts as different students log in.
Occasionally, we need to add a new network printer to all XP PCs ina particular lab. We currently do this on each PC in the lab via the following procedure:
1. Log in as Administrator.
2. Select all of the student user accounts (in Windows Explorer) and delete them.
3. Log in as a test user.
4. Add the network printer to the test user account.
5. Copy the test user account over as the Default User account.
6. Students log in, and their newly-created user account acquires the new network printer (from the Default User account).We need to speed this up. The slowest part is Step #2: deleting all the student user accounts on each XP PC. This can take 20-30 minutes for each PC, and may take a few hours to do all of the PCs in one lab (even if we have all PCs running at the same time).
My questions:
– Do we have to delete all existing student user accounts on each PC?
– If existing user accounts do *not* have to be deleted, how do you make the new network printer available to all users? Can we log in as Administrator, add the new network printer, and somehow apply it to all existing user accounts?
– If existing user accounts *must* be deleted, is there a faster way to delete them? Can they be deleted simultaneously (as a group), instead of waiting for Explorer to delete each user account sequentially? Would it be faster to delete user accounts from a command line (using CMD.EXE), or by using a script?
Thanks,
Peter Shriner
pshriner@lpsd.k12.co.us