How to make shared printer available to all users?

Question

I have a shared printer at office installed in one pc now I was able to connect and install the shared printer to the 2nd PC using local administrator account. Now when I login using non admin user on the 2nd pc it doesn't show the shared printer in the Devices and Printer. Is there a way to show the shared printer installed on admin to a non admin user?

Answer 1

@Norell

A connection to a shared printer is a PER USER setting. A connection created by one user is not included for other users logged onto the same machine. This is by design. This is THE design.

Every user on the machine will need to creation a connection to the shared printer.

Are you running into the issue where the user can't add the print driver so you are logging on as admin to get the driver?

Have each user add their own connection to the share.

If you want to perform this programmatically, there are ways to make that happen.

Answer 2

Hello @Norell

You can control this with 2 different policies:

1st: You need to "unlock" the regular users: Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options. Find the policy Devices: Prevent users from installing printer drivers. (set to Disable)

2nd: Allow non-administrators to install drivers for these device setup classes in the GPO section Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Driver Installation.

Enable the policy and specify the device classes that users should be allowed to install. Click the Show button and in the appeared window add two lines with device class GUID corresponding to printers:

Class = Printer {4658ee7e-f050-11d1-b6bd-00c04fa372a7};
Class = PNPPrinters {4d36e979-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}.

Reference to the full list of classes: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/system-defined-device-setup-classes-available-to-vendors?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Hope this helps with your query,

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