Question for the Microsoft gods

Deathmage

I have an issue today that is driving me bonkers.

I recently added a VM to my esxi 5.5 cluster at work that is a 2008 R2 server with only print management on it. I can map all of the printers on the network to the print server as-well as install the drivers correctly and I can resolve the IP and server name via DNS. I can test printers directly from the print server successfully printing out test pages however whenever I try to map printers you know from the directory in 'devices and printers' from any of the Windows 7 clients or any of the other 2003/2008 servers I get the classical "Windows cannot connect please check the network connection and make sure sure the printer is turned on". I disabled the windows firewall and I made the point to print GPO set to disabled and still no luck. Again I can print to all of the printers internally inside of the VM (so I know it communicating to all of the printers), I just can't connect to the printers listed in the directory on any of external desktop/client, it's like so annoying. spent about 6 hours until my brain just couldn't think anymore, was about to go on the VM.

The only thing I can think of, as I was driving home, is that there is a GPO on one of the DC that has a desginated print server policy set. But prior to last week the forest leve was 2000 and now it's 2003. I just don't know Server 2000 enough to know if GPO's worked in the same way they do in 2003.

Right now printers are connected to other servers in a ad hoc mentality it seems, there has never been a true print server.

Anyone ever have this problem before?

I'm truly puzzled...

Deathmage

so after like 5 hours of troubleshooting this afternoon. It seems the hard issues always present themselves too me and I never know why...

I ended up having to go to this location on the print server:

1. hkey/local_machine/system/controlset001/control/print/environments/windows NT x86/drivers/HP Universal Print Driver 5 PCL and go to the 'infpath' and look for the folder in the firerepository in system32.
2. then I had to navigate to %systemroot%/windows/system32/driverstore/filerepository/[folder name in step 1]
3. take ownership of said folder, and then close all of the windows, re-naviagte to the folder location and apply full control permissions to my account and administrators.
4. then I had to copy over the 5 PCL driver from the print server to a NAS folder and then copy the files from the NAS to this folder on the desktops in question.
5. go to the same registry location on the desktops as I did on the print server and append the registry with either the infpath location or import the entire HP driver from the print server that I exported. AlsoI needed to copy the driver over to each file repository from the original on the print server.

After doing it a few times I just made a quick script and applied it remotely to each desktop and did the process in about 5 minutes per 300 desktops....

...at this point I'm telling my co-worker in IT, who was also fixing the issues on the software-side of the company, screw this were going Terminal Services in a few months, every one of there PC's are going to be glorified thin clients....he chuckled....

it appears after looking in the event logs after all was said and done, the file server that had the printers mapped to it was reading a print job and then the C drive ran out of space and the print spooler crashed. But since the C drive had no space it corrupted the print driver because the driver didn't leave memory correctly since this physical server has memory contention (hence why I was moving printers off it, lol!!!!) and then filtered the corrupt printer driver to all of the desktops and this caused every printer to lose connection to the print server. Since the driver was corrupt this is what was causing the printers from being re-connected to all the desktops.

it was a bloody nightmare since a company without printers was like a massive annoyance I didn't want to have two weeks into the job...

.....but trial by fire I suppose, just glad the day is over....