Printing to a Remote Printer on Windows 2012 Server Using UNC May Fail

Printing will fail if you try to print to a shared printer on a Windows ® 2012 server using a UNC path before manually establishing a connection to the printer.

You should disable the popup by setting a group policy.

There are two Point and Print Restrictions settings:

• Computer Configuration/Policies/Administrative/Templates/Printers/Point and Print Restrictions

• User Configuration/Policies/Administrative/Templates/Control Panel/Printers/Point and Print Restrictions

Computer Configuration Setting

This setting is the important one. The original Server 2008 does not include this setting on the list - you need Server 2008 R2 for this setting to display. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Download the administrative templates from Server 2008 R2 and extract and copy the PolicyDefinitions? folder to C:\Windows\sysvol\domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions.

This missing policy will display in the Group Policy Management Editor. The ADMX files from Server 2008 R2 cause the Group Policy Management Editor from Server 2008 to 'complain' about parse errors, but it works just fine.

2. Click OK.

3. Once you have installed the proper ADMX files, for this to work in Windows ® 7, configure both of these Point and Print Restrictions settings to:

Enabled

Security Prompts, When Installing Drivers for a new connection = Do not show warning or elevation prompt

4. Finally apply the new group policy by running gpupdate /force from a command prompt.