I'm looking for a reliable, native Windows method to deploy printers across an organization with minimal user involvement. Our printers use Type 3 drivers, and the usual driver-installation restrictions create an administrator prompt unless RestrictDriverInstallationToAdministrators is disabled.
I've tested several approaches. Print Management policy can deploy asynchronously, but removing previously deployed printers has been troublesome and sometimes requires elevated cleanup. User-side printer preferences make removal easy and reliable, but they slow down logon because our environment requires Group Policy to finish before the desktop appears. Logon scripts run asynchronously, but a batch script using PrintUIEntry displays a prompt for every printer, and PowerShell is restricted in our domain. Computer-side deployment moves the delay to startup and works for every user on a machine, but does not support different printer assignments for shared computers.
Pre-staging trusted drivers is another possibility, although I'm not sure of the best way to implement it. I'd like to avoid third-party products and find out whether Type 3 printers can be installed silently, securely, and without a noticeable logon delay. What approaches have worked well for others?
5 Answers
For a native-only setup, I’d favor computer-side driver staging plus user-side printer assignment. Use startup or endpoint-management context for the driver files and packages, then apply user printers by department or location. Keep removal actions in a separate, targeted policy so old connections are cleaned up when users or devices change assignments.
Be careful about setting RestrictDriverInstallationToAdministrators to 0. That weakens an important mitigation for printer-driver vulnerabilities. The safer long-term answer is a Type 4 driver, but many printer models don’t support them. If Type 3 is unavoidable, use only trusted print servers, restrict Point and Print to those servers, approve the drivers, and harden the servers. Pre-stage the drivers with administrative rights rather than allowing arbitrary users to install them.
Type 4 drivers can also have reduced features and may shift more processing to the server. A controlled print server with approved universal Type 3 drivers can still work well when the security boundaries are carefully enforced.
A dedicated print-management product can solve most of these deployment and removal problems because it handles driver staging, targeting, and cleanup behind the scenes. Products in this category often eliminate printer-related support tickets, but licensing may be difficult to justify if native tools are required.
If the organization is moving toward cloud management, Universal Print with Intune policies is worth considering. It can handle printer assignment without relying as heavily on traditional logon processing, provided the printer supports Universal Print directly or through a connector. It’s less attractive for mixed platforms and won’t help much until the cloud transition is further along.
The most practical native approach is to pre-stage the printer drivers with an elevated management tool or computer-startup process, then deploy the printer connections through Group Policy. Target the policies by site or security group, and use a cleanup script or removal policy when assignments change. Pre-staging should reduce the first-logon delay, although the initial connection can still take some time.
That’s the direction I’m investigating. I’m hoping pre-staging will make the first-logon delay small enough to be acceptable.
Unfortunately, our printer models don’t offer usable Type 4 drivers. We’re restricting Point and Print to our print servers and planned to enable the less restrictive setting only long enough to deploy approved drivers, then restore the stricter configuration.