Setting a default printer with GPO

 

This one is pretty simple but the way we managed our printers made it a little harder. We deploy our printers with GPO using a machine setting. Students can only print to the printer in that room, a fool proof print-and-run-to-printer system.

If you use machine policy’s you can’t set the default printer. Default printer setting is a user policy setting.

Imagine a room with 2 printers, a high-volume B/W printer and an expensive-per-print Color machine. You want both pushed to the computers in that room ( Computers in an OU ), but you want the high-volume printer as default. You can make a new policy with the following settings:

You place your policy on an OU with machines. To use the user settings you need to enable User Group Policy loopback processing mode.

At the printer settings, enable: Set this printer as default printer.

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