Question : On a File/Print server, is there a way to tell who has certain printers mapped?

We are getting ready to do a major printer shuffle. At that time printer names will be changed to fit the new locations of the printers.

Being slightly 'proactive' we would like to inform the individuals that have the effected printers currently mapped to their PCs so they can delete the currently mapped printer and reconnect the appropriate one after the shuffle.

We have been unable to locate anywhere, "How to tell who has which printer mapped" within out domain.

Answer : On a File/Print server, is there a way to tell who has certain printers mapped?

I'm not sure this is possible from the server end. There is a way to tell who at any given moment is printing to the printers (example: http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2006/01/19/how-can-i-tell-which-users-are-connected-to-a-print-queue.aspx). But I don't know of any way from the server side to tell who is mapped to what printer. Perhaps if you turned on some special auditing settings for print queues.

In my experience the easiest way to do this would be through a log on script run on their local machine. If you want to get fancy you can use the script to remap them and turn it on after you do the printer move and just have it report back the results of the remapping.

Below is a sample script that would just report to you what each user has mapped. It will create a text file in a file share each time a user logs into a machine, just change the PrintServer and OutputLocation variables in the beginning your print server and a share that users have write access to.

                       
         
           
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             PrintServer = "\\PrintServer"
OutputLocation = "\\FileServer\WriteableShare"


Set WshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
strUsername = WshNetwork.username
strComputer = WshNetwork.computerName
OutputFile= OutputLocation & "\" & strUsername & "-" & strComputer & ".txt"

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 
Set oLogFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(OutputFile, True)

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Printer where Network=True",,48)
For Each objItem In colItems
  bChange = False
  If ucase(objItem.ServerName) = ucase(PrintServer) Then
    strPrinterPath = Ucase(objItem.ServerName & "\" & objItem.ShareName)
    oLogFile.WriteLine strPrinterPath
  End If
Next

oLogFile.Close
Set objWMIService = Nothing
Set oLogFile = Nothing
set objFSO = Nothing
set wshNetwork = nothing

           
         