Server 2003 restore printers from backup?

[TEEZLE]

For some reason our Xerox printers this new year are acting up and not keeping the "color" settings and reverting to black and white. We use Symantec 12.5D for our backups. I looked everywhere but could not find an easy way to restore our printers, spoolers etc. from BackupExec. Is there a way to do it? Thank you in advance.

p.s. The print migrator tool for Windows did not work out. We tried to use this from one print server already. Only HP printers were copied and Xerox did not work!

 

[IndyColtsFan]

For some reason our Xerox printers this new year are acting up and not keeping the "color" settings and reverting to black and white. We use Symantec 12.5D for our backups. I looked everywhere but could not find an easy way to restore our printers, spoolers etc. from BackupExec. Is there a way to do it? Thank you in advance.

p.s. The print migrator tool for Windows did not work out. We tried to use this from one print server already. Only HP printers were copied and Xerox did not work!

Do the Xerox printers use a special printer port/monitor? If so, maybe it wasn't picked up by the Print Migrator.

You should be able to restore printers using a combination of the registry keys and reinstalling drivers.

 

[TEEZLE]

Symantec stated I could just restore the Windows\spool folder and it should restore the printers - NOT!!

thanks for the suggestions. Actually I ended up removing and reinstalling all the printers. I used cleanspl.exe from the server toolkit to remove all traces of the drivers. Then I re-installed all the printers It was approx. about 35 printers but i ended up using the Xerox Global and HP universal drivers to ease my install.

One problem I did want to note with MS Print Migrator, during it's process of backing up drivers, it does not backup cab files that are part of the Xerox drivers! So when you go to restore it can't find the cab files.

Also, when using cleanspl, it does not remove the custom paper size forms (which was good for me because I did not want to re-specify them).