How do I allow users to install local printer - w/o admin rights

[Magnus Carling]

Greetings,

I need to allow users with laptops to install local
printers at offices they travel to. But I absolutely don't
want to give them local admin rights - nor power user. Is
there a solution to this? I have looked everywhere but
couldn't find any.

Best regards,

Magnus

[Robert Orleth [MS]]

Nope. Sorry. But this is good feedback, thanks.

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"Magnus Carling" <magnus....@stena.com> wrote in message
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[Bruce Sanderson]

If you can install the relevant drivers in advance, the users should be able to connnect
to network printers.

Users do have the right and permission to connect to network printers, but not to install
the drivers.

--

Bruce Sanderson MVP
bruce.s...@gems6.gov.bc.ca

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.

"Magnus Carling" <magnus....@stena.com> wrote in message
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[Robert Orleth [MS]]

By default, users on workstations can connect to network printers even if
the driver is not installed. By default, this is off on servers.

The question specifically said "local printers", but you may well have a
point, and my other answer is too simple. Magnus, with "local printers", do
you really mean use the Add Printer Wizard to install a *local printer* ?
This scenario won't work, period. Or did you mean "install printers that are
attached to a print server in the *local office*" ? That should just work,
assuming your users are running workstation builds on their laptops and you
haven't changed default settings.

If we're talking printers that get directly attached to the laptop through
parallel or USB: if the printers are plug-and-play capable and drivers for
the printers are either inbox or correctly preinstalled, in most cases it
will just work automagically. The cases where it won't work are if there is
some user intervention required, such as if there are multiple printers
using the same plug-and-play ID, or if part of the installation is to bring
up a wizard to e.g. align print cartridges. The parallel port isn't really
pnp-capable to begin with, so in W2k, only on reboot the parallel port is
polled to see whether maybe there is a printer out there (in XP there is
warm polling as long as there is no other device such as a zip drive
installed on the port), but USB printers should be detected/installed.

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Any opinions or policies stated within are my own and do not necessarily
constitute those of my employer. I reside in Washington, USA, where Title 19
declares that sending me Unsolicited Commercial Email (IOW: spam) can result
in a $500 fine. Harvesting of this address for purposes of bulk email is
explicitly prohibited.

"Bruce Sanderson" <Bruce.S...@junk.junk> wrote in message
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[Bruce Sanderson]

Well, Robert, maybe Windows 2000 Users are supposed to be able to "connect" to network
printers even if the driver is not yet installed, but our experience with Windows 2000 Pro
(RTM, SP1 and SP2) in a Domain is that Users can not install such printers. They either
get told that they do not have permission to install the printer driver, or sometimes, the
printer appears to install, but they can't print until an Administrator connects to the
same printer to get the driver properly installed. The printers are various HP LaserJet
and Colour LaserJet models.

In this case, we are talking about people that logon with their Domain acccounts and they
have not been explicitly added to any local group; thus they default to the permissions
and rights associated with the local Users group.

The print servers in this case are Windows NT 4 SP5. We have installed the Windows 2000
printer drivers on the server, usually via a Point and Print bundle downloaded from the HP
web site.

With Windows XP, we have found that this is not a problem; Users can connect to network
printers whether or not the driver is pre-installed by an Administrator.

I assumed that because Magnus was referring to moving between offices, "local" meant
network connected printers in the office the laptop happened to be in at the time, not
physically "local printers" on the laptop's parallel or USB port. Perhaps I was mistaken
in that assumption.

--

Bruce Sanderson MVP
bruce.s...@gems6.gov.bc.ca

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.

"Robert Orleth [MS]" <ror...@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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[Robert Orleth [MS]]

Interesting. I've seen a number of drivers that indeed need admin rights to
install properly (typically, even admin rights on the *server*). That's a
driver and not a spooler issue. I suspect this is the case in your scenario,
as you see different results with different drivers.

I wish I could give a better answer than "it depends", but then user-mode
drivers really can make full use of the Win32 API, and if they choose to do
things that only work in certain contexts (such as access the registry of
the remote machine directly), that's their decision.

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Any opinions or policies stated within are my own and do not necessarily
constitute those of my employer. I reside in Washington, USA, where Title 19
declares that sending me Unsolicited Commercial Email (IOW: spam) can result
in a $500 fine. Harvesting of this address for purposes of bulk email is
explicitly prohibited.

"Bruce Sanderson" <Bruce.S...@junk.junk> wrote in message

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