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Win2K: managing printers remotely?

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by timmitchell

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Hi there. I have 5000+ machines across ten different physical locations, and I need to find some sort of solution to remotely add or change print drivers for these workstations. We add/move/remove network printers somewhat frequently, and I need to be able to remotely change the print driver and/or ports without physically touching every machine. Is there a reg hack or a script that can automate this process? Obviously, I'm looking for a tool that is native to Windows but would be willing to purchase software to accomplish this if absolutely necessary.

9 replies

by acattr

Windows 2000 Print Server.

If all your machines are NT/2000/XP, then when ever you update the drivers on the Print Server, it automatically updates the drivers on the desktops.

by acattr

Question: I need to find some sort of solution to remotely add or change print drivers for these workstations.?

Answer: when you change the port on the Print server, clients automatically use new port. No need to reconfigure the desktops.One more thing, there is a utility called con2prt.exe on the NT/2000 resource kit, allows you to map network printers via logon scripts. You can do all of this from your desk, no need to get up.

by timmitchell

Sorry, I should have mentioned that all our printers are mapped as local printers, so they can be available for anyone logging into the machine. We use a local port on each machine to print to the IP-based printers (DNS is not used).

by d_v ant

You can use Rundll32 to remotely add printer to workstations. The advantage to this is that the printer will be available to every user that uses the workstation. See the following example....

syntax:
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /c\\workstation /n\\printserver\printername /j"LanMan Print Services"

by curlergirl

Remote control software is probably the best solution for you. This would allow you to take control of the workstations from a remote location over the network. XP has a remote client built in, although I'm not crazy about it. But some people swear by it. We've also used a shareware product called VNC for this (because I prefer it and for non-XP workstations) - it is pretty stripped down, not a lot of bells & whistles, but it works pretty well except for some screen refresh oddities. You can find out more and download it from:

www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

If you want a more robust remote control software, there are plenty of not-free solutions - pcAnywhere, Timbuktu and NetOP to name a few. The only one of those I've ever used is pcAnywhere and it is very stable and easy to use once installed. All of these solutions, including VNC, require installation at both the host and client end, but VNC can be installed from a script and pcAnywhere has a method for unattended installation as well. I don't know about the others.

Hope this helps!

by curlergirl

Another benefit of using remote control software is that you can do almost anything else remotely as well - anything that doesn't require actual physical contact with the workstation, including rebooting, can be done remotely because you are taking complete control of the desktop.

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