I just found out that all my printers published in all my
active directory are gone. All the printers are still
installed on the servers, all the printers work, but all
my plublishings are gone. I even wrote a querie to find
them, and nothing. I checked the properties of one, it had
the checkmark to plublish in active directory but i
couldnt see it, i removed the checkmark hit apply, put it
back, hit apply again and then ran my AD querie and found
it, I have 100 printers, no way i can do this for each of
them. Any ideas?? Why the hell did all my printers
disapear?? Obviously i must have AD replication issues??

You can try restart the printer spool service

--
Regards
Christoffer Andersson

No email replies please - reply in the newsgroup

"josh" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:591d01c40088$a86c7950$a501280a@phx.gbl...

Thanks but print spool is only if i am having issues with
printing. My printers all work fine and users can print,
but if i browse my AD i cannot see any published printers
or even if i open my AD console, i can;t see any printers.
Seems like all my printers lost the ability to publish
themselves in ADS. WHat I have done, on the printer
properties, the sharing tab, removed the publish in active
directory checkmark, applied it and then put it back. This
then restores the publishing of the object in ADS. I had
to do it too every printer. I want to know what caused it
to loose them all.

I resolved a smilier issue by restarting the printer spool service. I'm also
seen this happens to other users here in the newsgroup, the resolution can
be different from issue to issue. I hope you found a solution.

--
Regards
Christoffer Andersson

No email replies please - reply in the newsgroup

"josh" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:5a9501c4008f$02eff4a0$a001280a@phx.gbl...

most likely a printer pruning issue with AD. check this
out. The root of all evil DNS problem.

The pruner runs on all AD DCs. Periodically, the pruner
connects to the server print queue to ensure that printers
published in AD are still available on the network. The
pruner will try to contact a print queue a certain number
of times within a given time frame. The default interval
is three checks at 8-hour intervals in 24 hours (you can
configure this interval in the MMC Group Policy snap-in
under Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates,
Printers). If the pruner is unable to contact the print
queue within the given period, the pruner removes the
print queue object from AD. Thus, using the default
interval, the pruner can prune a printer from AD within a
24-hour period.

Each DC's pruner begins by compiling a list of all the
printers published in AD. The pruner then uses DNS to
determine which print servers are in its own AD site. The
pruner then attempts to contact each print queue on the
print servers in the same site, in turn, removing print
queue objects from AD as required.

Problems can occur when the pruner can't find the print-
server information in DNS and thus can't determine whether
the print server is in the same AD site as the DC. In that
event, the pruner simply assumes that the printer is in
the same AD site as the DC on which the pruner is running.
This assumption can cause problems in environments in
which the DC and print server are in different locations
with a slow network connection between them or if one of
the machines is behind a firewall. If the DC can't contact
a print queue within a specified period, the pruner will
simply remove the print queue information from AD. The DC
performing the deletion will of course use standard
directory replication to replicate the change to all other
DCs in the domain.

Another problem involves the DHCP client service. As you
might be aware, the DHCP client service is necessary for
dynamic DNS (DDNS) registrations. So, if the DHCP client
service is stopped on the print server, the server can't
dynamically reregister its host address (A) and pointer
(PTR) resource records. After a period of time, the print
server's DNS record might be removed from DNS through
aging and scavenging. If the print server's record is
removed, each pruner will assume that the DC on which it's
running is in the same AD site as the print server. Again,
if no network connection exists between any of these DCs
and the print server, the pruner will remove the printers
from AD. It's important to ensure that the DHCP client is
running on all print servers in AD deployments that run
DDNS, a task that you can enforce through Group Policy.
Similarly, if you unplug a DC from the network for a
period exceeding the configured retry interval but the DC
continues to run, the pruner running on that DC will
remove all published printers because it can't contact
them. If the DC reconnects to the network, the DC will
replicate the removal to other DCs.


Hope that helps.

The pruner would make sense. Each site has 1 DC, that DC
runs the print service and dhcp for that site. But my
edmonton office, last friday the hub died. I had to send
one out monday and installed it with them last night.
Meaning it was 4 full days that i had a DC out of the
loop. When i got it back last night, though everything was
fine, but today a call came in about not able to browse
printers in AD. Although the only printer we could see was
the Edmonton offices printer. All others in my 8 other
sites were gone. Does this make any sense to you?? Normal
behaviour of the pruner?? Do you recommend i puch the time
ahead on the pruner, like 7 days??

After looking at that policy, all my settings are ''not
configured ''. So if thats the cause, do we assume pruning
was not a factor??

maybe.which policy did you check? default domain, site,
local. etc. not sure how your forest policies are set up.
That info i posted was more for informational purposes.

Glenn, I have a very simple structure..basicall like this
my domain\edmonton(ou)\Printers(ou)

I checked each ou GP, I all have those settings in
question not configured. I am wondering if its a good idea
to disable printer pruning on my top domain policy. Since
we arent that big and we dont move network printers around
too much, actually not at all.

yes. if you have a mangeable AD forest that pruning isnt
necessary then i see no reason why you couldnt define it.
good luck.