sporticia

I can’t say I’m a great fan of mysteries, I tend to either want to skip to the end real fast or know the outcome ahead of time. I guess it’s the uncertanty that I dislike, I like either solid ‘yes’ or ‘no’ type scenarios, it’s the binary in me :op

However, I must say I currently am experiencing a small but non-critical mystery to do with the companies printers.

We have a mix of network attached printers in the office from HP, Canon and Kyocera. They are all directly connected to the network via jetdirect cards or something that emulates the functionality of a JetDirect ethernet interface.

I have installed all of these printers onto the Windows Server 2008 that also serves as out main file server (file and printing go together in my book). I have installed the x64 and x86 based drivers without issue, and then have shared them out from the server. I then ticked the box to “List in the directory”

Now, when I open my printers folder in Vista and click to “Add a printer” I can choose between a local printer or a networked one. selecting a networked one lists all of my configured network printers fine, and if I select them it installs the driver(s) and the whole thing just works. kudos Microsoft.

What I cannot do however is find the printer objects in active directory !?!?!?!? WTF ? Opening the active directory user and computers (ADUC) console I navigate to the “Printers” container…..empty ! yet if I search active directory for all printers, they are all returned in a nice little list.

Where do printer objects get placed by default when they are added to active directory ? Right clicking any of the printer objects in the ADUC console does glean a context menu with the “move” option, so I could place them where ever I like, but I want to know where I am moving them from in case anything breaks and I need to put them back again.

Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you ??……………….

[addendum] So my boss solved this one for me. It seems to have to enable the “Users, Contacts, Groups and Computers as containers” option in the “view” menu on the ADUC console. This allows you to expand computers as if they were containers themselves and there inside my file server were our printer objects <sigh>

Tags: active directory, printing, windows

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under active directory, windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.