Adding a Windows printer

Question

I need to add 60 label printers to my Windows 7 computer, as network printers. They are all the same printer brand (datamax - O'Neil MP Compact4 MarkII) using the same driver. Each printer is pre configured with IP address and port. Of course I can add each printer one by one to my Windows, but does anyone know a way to script this into a .bat file or similar?

Answer 1

There are a few ways to do this. If you are adding them as local devices with ports, one of the easiest is to use the built-in vbs scripts on Windows under:

C:\Windows\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\en-US

If you need to create the ports you can do this via prnport.vbs then create the printer using prnmngr.vbs. Both of these commands are very straight forward to use:

cscript prnport.vbs -a -r <port name> -h <ip address>
cscript prnmngr.vbs -a -p <printer name> -m <driver name> -r <port name>

Putting this into a large batch file is simple.

I do this so often that I built an Excel Workbook to do it for me. This also allows you to select a remote system / server and poll it for what drivers are installed so you don't mis-type that. You can use this to do the actual work or to create you a batch file that you can later modify.

http://www.ballisticecho.com/articles-and-downloads/best-tool-for-printer-creation-excel-vs-print-management-console