Push printers to Windows 2000 clients using Group Policy

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Working for a credit union and rolling out Windows 2000, I was faced with the challenge of having network printers installed automatically on Win2k Pro machines -- regardless of who might be logging on. Each of our branches are configured as a site in Active Directory, so I applied the following group policy at the site level:

  • Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Run these programs at user logon -> 'printers.bat'

The printer's 'printers.bat' file should look something like this:

  • rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /u /z /nservernamesharename

Keep in mind that the first printer installed will become the default, so this may require educating users on how to check or change the default printer. The same policy can be applied to an OU, but the computer object(s) must be moved into that OU.

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This was first published in January 2003

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