Printer Mapper

Overview

Printer Mapper helps automate printer deployment via Group Policy and registry settings. It logs activity for troubleshooting and can be built from source using .NET. When running the utility it will silently map the printers to the users device with zero human interaction. This will work from any Windows Print Server or Samba printer share.

Download the utility from here or compile the source-code yourself using the notes below. This can then be deployed using an RMM or Intune.

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Deploying Printers

Step 1: Create a user-based Group Policy to set these registry values: I recommend when creating these registrys changes you select replace and also enable the checkbox labled "Remove this item when no longer applied"

This can be defined using the following GPO:

User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PrinterMapper]
"ManagedPrintServer"="PRINT-SERVER-NAME"
"ITOffice"="\\PRINT-SERVER-NAME\ITOffice"
"MainOffice"="\\PRINT-SERVER-NAME\MainOffice"
"Reception"="\\PRINT-SERVER-NAME\Reception"

Step 2: Automatically start PrinterMapper after user logon by adding this to Group Policy: Adding this into the GPO will force the application to automatically start after the user-logon has completed.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"StartPrinterMapper"="C:\Windows\System32\PrinterMapper.exe"

Step 3: Deploying the PrinterMapper.exe locally to your clients:

You can download the latest version here or compile the application yourself.

You can deploy this out to your devices in multiple ways. If you are using an RMM/Intune solution, you can use the following PowerShell script to download the application locally to the device. Alternatively, you could store the PrinterMapper.exe file on your file server and deploy it using Group Policy as well.

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/AdamKearn/printermapper/releases/download/v1.0.0/PrinterMapper.exe" -OutFile "C:\Windows\System32\PrinterMapper.exe"

Step 4: Check to make sure your GPO looks something similar to the following:

Optional: Allow non-admins to install printer drivers silently: This can be defined using the following GPO:

Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Printers > Point and Print Restrictions

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\PointAndPrint]
"RestrictDriverInstallationToAdministrators"=dword:00000000
"Restricted"=dword:00000001
"TrustedServers"=dword:00000001
"ServerList"="PRINT-SERVER-NAME.domain.local"
"InForest"=dword:00000000
"NoWarningNoElevationOnInstall"=dword:00000001
"UpdatePromptSettings"=dword:00000002

Finally: Linking the GPO:

When testing this GPO, make sure to link it to an OU that contains both User & Computer objects. Once you are happy with how things are working and are ready to move this into production, I recommend linking the GPO to the top-level and setting it to enforced.

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Debugging

PrinterMapper creates a log file every run. You can view/access this log from the following location:

%appdata%\PrinterMapper\log.txt

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Building from Source

1. Install the latest .NET SDK.

2. To run the code locally on your computer for quicker development:

   dotnet run
   

3. To create a single distributable binary:

   dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true