Question

How to retrieve Driver information for Network Printer?

Asked by: nikpreek

Hi Experts,

I have a list of 100+ network printers on different print servers. I need to find the driver information for each at least Driver Name, Driver Version. If I can get Driver path, Data file path & config file path it'll be amazing.
I'm thinking of using DOS batch file, VB script or any programming language like VB6, VB.NET or C# (2005 or less).
I'm supposed to install all these drivers on about 30+ servers.
So, once I've collected this data I'll use psexec to run batch files & VBS files copied on all these servers to install drivers using AddWindowsPrinterConnection from "WScript.Network". Please advice if there is any better way of doing this. I dont have any driver installation files for these printers.

This is very urgent so pls help ASAP.

Thanks & Regards,
Nik

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Asked On
2009-07-30 at 06:11:32ID24612799
Tags

Network printers

,

printer driver

,

scripting

Topics

Peripherals

,

IT Administration

,

Network Management

Participating Experts
1
Points
200
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: xxdcmastPosted on 2009-07-30 at 08:07:09ID: 24980558

Ok well I dont know how to do this with VB but I did just perform a similar print migration using a tool from Microsoft. The tool is called print migrator

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9b9f2925-cbc9-44da-b2c9-ffdbc46b0b17&displaylang=en

Basically what you do is run it on your print server and it will back up all of your print server settings to a cab file. This does everything it will get all of the drivers, printer names, print spools, etc. Basically it will completely mirror your print server to a new one.

So in your situation I would reccomend doig this. Taking the print migrator and running it on all of your print servers to collect the drivers, printer shares, spools etc. Then on a new server you can restore the cab files from these print servers one by one until you have all of the printers you need.

This is the consolidation ability in print migrator very bottom of the page.
http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/07/27/print_server.html

Once you have restored all of the cab files to this new machine you can then run print migrator again to make a consolidated snapshot of ALL the printers. Then you can use that cab file to deploy them across the 30+ servers you need to.

I hope im being clear in what im describing.

 

by: nikpreekPosted on 2009-07-30 at 08:55:32ID: 24981104

Sorry xxdcmast,

I think I need to be more specific. The servers where I need to install drivers dont need to connect to printers or have them connected ever. Its the .NET code which will automatically send the documents to these. What is needed is the driver installed on these.

On the initial suggestions, I cannot log on to the print server. All I have is a list of printers (100+) which belong to about 7-10 print servers. Is there a way to get the driver information just knowing \<printer">\\<server>\<printer name>?

Also most importantly, I canot get all printers from the each print server as there are selective list of printers from each print server.

Hope I'm able to explain it clear this time. Pls let me know if you need further information.

Regards,

Nikhil

 

by: xxdcmastPosted on 2009-07-30 at 09:22:14ID: 24981429

Well you may be able to try running some WMI commands against the print servers themselves. Im not sure if you will get an access denied message though, not sure what your permissions are.

I just ran this against my local machine and it looks pretty good. Not really sure if it will help you though. You will need to modify the script with the name of the print server.

strComputer = "FullComputerName" 
strDomain = "DOMAIN" 
Wscript.StdOut.Write "Please enter your user name:"
strUser = Wscript.StdIn.ReadLine 
Set objPassword = CreateObject("ScriptPW.Password")
Wscript.StdOut.Write "Please enter your password:"
strPassword = objPassword.GetPassword()
Wscript.Echo
 
Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator") 
Set objWMIService = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, _ 
    "root\CIMV2", _ 
    strUser, _ 
    strPassword, _ 
    "MS_409", _ 
    "ntlmdomain:" + strDomain) 
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _
    "SELECT * FROM Win32_Printer",,48) 
For Each objItem in colItems 
    Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------"
    Wscript.Echo "Win32_Printer instance"
    Wscript.Echo "-----------------------------------"
    Wscript.Echo "Description: " & objItem.Description
    Wscript.Echo "DeviceID: " & objItem.DeviceID
    Wscript.Echo "DriverName: " & objItem.DriverName
    Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objItem.Name
    Wscript.Echo "PortName: " & objItem.PortName
    Wscript.Echo "PrintProcessor: " & objItem.PrintProcessor
    Wscript.Echo "ServerName: " & objItem.ServerName
    Wscript.Echo "ShareName: " & objItem.ShareName
    Wscript.Echo "SystemName: " & objItem.SystemName
Next

                                              
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by: xxdcmastPosted on 2009-07-30 at 09:26:58ID: 24981493

And if your wondering how I created this I used WMI code creator. It can be found here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2cc30a64-ea15-4661-8da4-55bbc145c30e&displaylang=en

This may actually help you out a lot because you will be able to browse the WMI repositories and find what you are looking for. The ones I searched in were win32_printer and win32_printerdriver

 

by: nikpreekPosted on 2009-07-30 at 10:40:21ID: 24982335

Thanks xxdcmast... this was just incredible... never used SWbemLocator

But even this wants me to log on to the server and needs to have admin rights. It is the very much similar result what I'm getting from prnmngr.vbs, which I already tried.

Looks like I'll need to write a program to get all printer drivers from the print server (using prnmngr.vbs) and ask someone in operations to run it. Then write another program to extract my printers information and then 3rd and 4th to apply these to the needed 30+ servers... Hooooshhhhsssssss :-(

But I'll still want to give you few points, dont know how?

Regards,

Nik

 

by: xxdcmastPosted on 2009-07-30 at 10:43:59ID: 24982379

I figured that you would need at least some rights to the server for the WMI to work correctly.

That WMI code creator is definitely a huge help and a great tool to have on hand. Im not good at VBscript at all so its nice to have somethign that will mae the script to retrieve the data for you.

Im not sure if you can split points since im the only person answering the question but you may be able to have a moderator do it.

 

by: nikpreekPosted on 2009-07-30 at 11:06:46ID: 24982664

Oh O...

Can a Moderator allot 200 points to xxdcmast please?

Thanks again,

Nik

 

by: nikpreekPosted on 2009-07-30 at 11:12:56ID: 24982747

Just an update, what your script does is something I used to do already using:

cscript prnmngr.vbs -s <server name> -l

It gives me info as below:

Server name <server name>
Printer name ACCPAY04
Share name ACCPAY04
Driver name HP LaserJet 4
Port name IP_10.3.132.14
Comment
Location
Print processor WinPrint
Data type RAW
Parameters
Attributes 8264
Priority 1
Default priority 0
Status Unknown
Average pages per minute 0

Regards,

Nikhil

 

by: nikpreekPosted on 2009-08-28 at 05:45:37ID: 25206920


Can a Moderator allot 200 points to xxdcmast please?

You can then close the Question.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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