Installing Printer Drivers

[BillClark]

Experimenting with a new VDI environment and how best to setup printers on the guest workstations (using Instant Clones in Horizon).  Using DEM Printer Mappings under the User Environment tab, I have setup several printers that are hosted on our internal print server.  I'm using the conditions option to only install the printer if a user is a member of an AD Group.  Initially, this is working well but has a bit of a delay in installing the printer to the session.  I'm wondering would it be better/quicker if I pre-installed the necessary print drivers to the golden image so when DEM is installing the printer it doesn't have to drag the driver files across the network each time?  Or does this even matter and it will always install the printer driver from the print server during the install?  In our testing the delay isn't horrible, but that is with 1-5 users and I have a feeling that delay will get worse when 150+ users are all firing up sessions and printers are being installed.

[itaut]

Mapping printers through Windows' default functionality can be a horrid experience.
I don't really think the problem lies with Windows itself, but more with the manufacturers drivers.

Having the drivers pre-installed in our golden image and simply using powershell to create the corrosponding registry-settings (in hkcu\printers and hkcu\microsoft\winNT\currrent\etc.) for each user at logon, made our 100+ printers connect in under a second, instead of the 30 to 180+ seconds when using add-printer, vmDEM's printermapping or group policies.

Edited July 25 by itaut

[Guy Leech]

Be careful going direct to the registry to manipulate printers, it bypasses the spooler which can confuse it, unless you are stopping the spooler, changing the registry, and restarting.
It's better to use PowerShell to add/map the printers as that goes through the correct Windows APIs so the spooler is fully aware. I've done it through logon scripts in the past, having dumped what printers a user has at logoff to a file in their home directory which is read by the script at logon and maps those.
Definitely have all required drivers ,where possible, in your base image as already stated.

[itaut]

I would not recommend manipulating existing printers.
Using a mandatory profile and preparing the the registry, before the shell loads has never caused issues for us.

 

[Guy Leech]

You're lucky then and I hope you continue that way. 🤞

[John Twilley]

We have about 20 different printer drivers and I installed all of them in the master image.

I use the "PrintBrmUi.exe" for Printer Migration, inside Windows\System32 folder in Windows 10/11.
You can back up the printers, including queues, ports, and printer drivers, to a printerExport file, which can then be used to import that printer to another computer running Windows 10/11 master.

This will greatly speed up the printer mapping, as well as reduce all that unnecessary network traffic and Disk I/O!

[BillClark]

Thanks everyone for the time and replies.  I see several options to play with and see what works best for us in our environment.  For sure, I'll get the printer drivers installed on the master image to reduce overhead on that aspect of printer creation.