Group Policy Settings

Table 4.3 lists group policies related to printing. The Computer column indicates whether this policy must be set for the domain controller or for the print server. It is recommended that you have one or more computer groups for the domain controllers and one or more computer groups for the main printer servers to set the policy on those groups.

Table   4.3 Important Group Policy Settings for Printing

Name

Description

Computer

Default

Pruning Interval

The length of time that the pruner waits before starting another Active Directory scan.

Domain controller

8 hours

Pruning Retries

The number of scans after which the pruner deletes the printer from Active Directory if it is missing.

Domain controller

3

Backward Compatibility Printer Pruning

You might want a different pruning policy for non-Windows 2000 printers. The default is to never prune. Alternately, you can choose to prune only if the print server confirms that the printer is absent.

Domain controller

Never

Allow Pruning of Published Printers

If true, the printers published by this computer are candidates for pruning. If false, the pruner never attempts to prune the printer on this server.

Server

True

Allow Printers to be Published

Disable this option to prevent printers from being published

Server

Yes

Automatically Publish New Printers

Disable this option to prevent the Add Printer Wizard from automatically publishing a new printer when it is added

Server

Yes

Check Publish State

If this is set to any other value than never, the print server checks if its printers are published at regular intervals. (The check is the same as what is performed at system startup).

Server

Never

For more information about Group Policy, see "Group Policy" in the Microsoft ® Windows ®  2000 Server Resource Kit Distributed Systems Guide .