Print Spooler service changes to Manual start...

[angelshark]

Hello,

We have a newly installed Windows 2003 member server with the main role of print serving. I've noticed that by default the print spooler is stopped and in manual start. I've started the service, installed our 60 network printers and changed the service to automatic start. I've then noticed that the service changes to manual start after a few hours, so if a member of our IT staff restarts the server, there will be no network printing serving unless the print spooler service is started manually afterwards. I wish the print spooler service would stay in automatic start permanently. Do you have any ideas about this problem?

Thank you very much for your help.

 

[angelshark]

How come nobody has seen this? Maybe it's a security policy that has been applied to the print server?

 

[ncotton]

Have you checked the policy settings?

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[angelshark]

Yes, I have just found that there is a group policy that configures the Print Spooler in Startup Mode:Manual.

Thanks!

 

[angelshark]

Another question. Is there a way to make our print server bypass this group policy setting without moving the server out of its OU?

Thanks again.

 

[Spirit]

You could create a sub-OU and block inheritence of the offending GP.

Iain

 

[ncotton]

The best way to do that, would be to create a security group in AD, add all your other servers to it (this doesn't alter AD structure, just they are linked to the sec group. DONT put the Print servers in the group, then on the policy object that you dont want to PServers to get, remove the authenticated users Security Filtering from the GPMC, and add the NotPrintServers security group. You still apply the policy to the AllServers OU, but it will only be processed by members of the security group. There is no way, that I know you can exclude specific machines, without creating a WMI Query filter, but that means that you would have to maintain the query anytime you made any changes.


A suggestion for a WQL Filter for this would be something like...this isn't tested BTW

SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE CSName != 'PRINTSERVER1' AND CSName != 'PRINTSERVER2' AND CSName != 'PRINTSERVER3'

and so on

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant