Jul 29

Written by: Stephen Frost
29/07/2010 11:43 AM 

I just finished rolling out a new print server at work (Server 2008 R2) and have deployed and shared three printers on it.  I configured a new Group Policy Object (GPO) for each printer and set it up to deploy via the "shared printer" Group Policy Preferences (GPP) area (refer: User Configuration, Preferences, Control Panel Settings, Printers...).

After linking the new GPO to the appropriate Organisational Units (OUs) in Active Directory, we rebooted a bunch of PCs and everything seemed to be working just fine, except for one of our new Windows 7 64-bit laptops.  It just would not map any of the printers.

To troubleshoot, I started by checking to see how the GPOs were being applied on the laptop, by running:

gpresult /H:gpresult.htm

and then loading up the gpresult.htm file in Internet Explorer.  This showed me that the printers were failing to install, with the error message:

Result: Failure (Error Code: 0x80070bcb)

A bit of Googling later and I discovered that the likely cause was that the printer drivers could not install due to a problem with permissions (User Account Control) and that there was a policy setting called "Point and Print Restrictions" which can override this.

I therefore set up a new GPO and set the following:

in Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Printers:

set Point and Print Restrictions to DISABLED

in User Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Control Panel, Printers:

set Point and Print Restrictions to DISABLED

After rebooting the laptop, all the printer drivers installed automatically and the errors in GPRESULT were gone.