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| Control printers with group policy |
| You might think that something as relatively low tech as printing wouldn't consume much |
| administrative time. But printing will be a problem at some point in your IT career; fortunately, |
| there are steps you can take to avoid many potential problems. |
| One way to minimize printer management problems is to apply group policies to control the way |
| Windows 2000 handles printers and printing. The group policy branch \Computer |
| Configuration\Administrative Templates\Printers contains several policies that control printing. |
| You can open the Local Security Policy console from the Administrative Tools folder to set these |
| policies locally, or modify a group policy object with the Active Directory Users And Computers |
| console on a domain controller. |
| For example, if you don't want users to publish their printers in the Active Directory, disable the |
| Allow Printers To Be Published policy. This removes the List In Directory option from the Add |
| Printer Wizard and prevents users from publishing their printers. In cases where you do want |
| printers published (such as on servers), you can enable the Automatically Publish New Printers In |
| The Active Directory policy. |
| You might also want to give users access to some helpful information. You could have Windows |
| include a URL link in the Printers folder that points to your own internal technical support Web |
| site for printing. This internal site can provide information specific to the printers and printing |
| policies within your organization. Specify the URL by enabling and modifying the policy Custom |
| Support URL In The Printers Folder's Left Pane. |
| There are a handful of additional printing-related policies in the \Computer |
| Configuration\Administrative Templates\Printers group policy branch. To view an explanation of |
| each, double-click the policy to open its dialog box and then click the Explain tab. |
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