Home / server / Questions / 77617
Accepted
Doug Chase
Asked: 2009-10-24 04:35:39 +0800 CST

Check for the presence of a printer connection (unreliable printer mappings)

  • 772

I have a lab area with about 75 XP boxes in it. At logon, we map two served printers with the AddWindowsPrinterConnection method in a VBS. 5-10% of the time, the users find that the printers have not mapped successfully and their print jobs fail. If they reboot or log out, the printers will usually map successfully on the second try.

I'd like to add logic to my script to check if the printers mapped properly, and if not, rerun the AddWindowsPrinterConnection command - but I don't know how to check programmatically if a printer object has been mapped.

Or is there a more reliable strategy for mapping multiple printers persistently for these profiles? Are logon scripts still the best way to do this?

windows-xp

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Have a look at the script below. It reports on the print connections currently assigned. This should give you enough to get you started re: your own script, I would think.

    OPTION EXPLICIT

Dim oNetwork            ' WScript.Network object
Dim colPrinters         ' A collection of the users printer connections
Dim x               ' The canonical scratch variable of doom!

On Error Resume Next

Set oNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
Set colPrinters = oNetwork.EnumPrinterConnections

' Iterate thru the collection of printers
for x = 1 to colPrinters.count Step 2
    WScript.Echo "Printer: '" & colPrinters(x) & "' on port '" & colPrinters(x - 1) & "'"
next

set oNetwork = Nothing
set oShell = Nothing
    • 1

  2. You may want to also look at using the Printer Admin tool (prnadmin.dll) which comes as part of the Windows Resource Kit. It give a greater deal of control for what printers are on a particular system or in a user's profile.

    • 0