Software Deployment

It is usually the case that for the newly added printer to appear in Printers and faxes the spooler service must be stopped and then restarted at the end of the installation. This can be achieved in your package via the ServiceControl table or via a custom action.

Alternatively, you could just specify that a reboot is required (or enforced) after the package has been deployed (always assuming that would be acceptable to the end users).

If the newly added printer still does not appear following the spooler restart, then you will need to review your package. This forum has a number of threads regarding printer deployment, which may be of assistance in that case.

Regards,

Spartacus

Reboot isn't working mate.

I have taken the setupcapture quite a few times now and nothing seems to work.

Does anyone know the registry entries which makes the print manager or the spooler service to pick a printer driver.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,
Vivek

If the reboot isn't working then something in your original capture isn't right - not too surprising as Windows Installer was never really designed with this sort of thing in mind.

Instead, you could try the approaches noted here and here and incorporate them into your package (via a custom action).

This would first involve identifying all the files that the driver needs from the supplied .inf file - (which can be inspected using notepad). Once you have a list of all the files, create a new component to hold these files plus the .inf file itself and create a separate subfolder in your installation into which your package will install the files.

You would then be in a position to create the custom action which installs the printer driver via the printui mechanism described in the articles I have linked to. You would reference the .inf file in the subfolder that your package creates. Note that you would need to sequence the action so it runs after the driver files have been copied.

Note also that there may be a certain amount of cleaning up of your capture to do in terms of any originally captured registry entries that concern the printer driver. These, at best, will be redundant and at worst may interfere with what the new custom action will do, so they should be removed from the package.

Finally, any files in your capture with the following name
oem<number>.inf and oem<number>.pnf

can be removed as these will be created dynamically by the printui mechanism.

For uninstallation, a similar custom action could be written that passes the /dl or /dd qualifiers to printui.

Regards,

Spartacus