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I am trying to add an Epson XP-610 printer to every endpoint's Printer Driver Store in our environment. Does anyone know a way to push a printer driver and stage it so it appears in the list of options under the 'Add a Printer' wizard?

The printer is discoverable on this network, but the drivers are not visible in the Add a Printer' list and I do not want to have to manually install this on over 300 endpoints.

The background of is that this printer will only work on a specific vehicle that is on a completely different network. Adding it via IP through GPO isn't going to work so I need to stage the drivers and make sure the model appears in this list so individuals can install it on their own when connecting to the printer through the vehicles WiFi.

I say Reinstate Monica
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bh2win
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2 Answers2

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Get the printer drivers and extract them so the INF is visible.

Some times its easier to get the file from the windows repository.

Install the driver on this computer even if you don't attach printer to it.

C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

You should find a folder with a matching name.

Open and Administrative command prompt Windows has built-in scripts for you

cd C:\Windows\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\en-US>

now the script you need:

cscript prndrvr.vbs -a -m "driver" -v 3 -e "Windows IA64" -i c:\temp\drv\drv.inf -h c:\temp\drv -s **computer name** -u administrator -w password

For the username and password you can use the local credentials or domain credentials.

You will have to modify each of the parameters to meet your needs

-m     - driver model name  (The model name has to be exactly as it is written in the INF file.
-v     - version probably leave it 3
-e     - environment  "Windows {NT x86 | X64 | IA64}"
cybernard
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  • Nice--I learned something useful! – I say Reinstate Monica Jan 06 '18 at 01:14
  • @TwistyImpersonator If you think that is nice I modified several of the scripts in that folder and combined them into 1, that installs the driver, deletes existing printer of the same name, and creates or re-creaters the whole printer object. It does it all remotely to any computer visible on the domain. The OP didn't ask for that, but if you want a copy let me know. – cybernard Jan 06 '18 at 01:57
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https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731292(v=ws.11).aspx

That page leads to 2 links on how to deploy your printers via Group Policy. Here's the steps, in case that links ever dies:

Open Print Management.

In the left pane, click Print Servers, click the applicable print server, and click Printers.

In the center pane, right-click the applicable printer, and then click Deploy with Group Policy.

In the Deploy with Group Policy dialog box, click Browse, and then choose or create a new GPO for storing the printer connections.

Click OK.

Specify whether to deploy the printer connections to users, or to computers:

To deploy to groups of computers so that all users of the computers can access the printers, select the The computers that this GPO applies to (per machine) check box.

To deploy to groups of users so that the users can access the printers from any computer they log onto, select the The users that this GPO applies to (per user) check box.

Click Add.

Repeat steps 3 through 6 to add the printer connection setting to another GPO, if necessary.

Click OK.

Community
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computercarguy
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  • The thing with the Group Policy is that it asks for an IP. As I stated, this particular printer is on a different network and I didn't mention that there are three different printers on three different vehicles. I was wondering if I could just stage the device in the Add a Driver/Printer wizard. – bh2win Jan 05 '18 at 20:49
  • Group Policy should allow you to add the printers for just the Groups/vehicles that have access to the printer. You may need to create a Group for the vehicle, if you don't already have one, and add the specific computers on it for this to work. Alternately, you can email your users a 1 line command that'll download and install the driver from the printer. IDK how to get the driver on the printer, but I've used it that way before. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/add-network-printer-via-command-line-58722.html – computercarguy Jan 05 '18 at 21:05
  • If that isn't what you're looking for, I guess I still don't understand what you're getting at. Sorry. – computercarguy Jan 05 '18 at 21:05