Ever wish you could copy/paste printers from one computer to another? Well, this is about as close as you’re going to get.
Using Microsoft’s Print Migrator 3.1 tool, you can grab a snapshot of printers installed, their names, their ports, and (most of) their drivers. The tool will save a .cab file to whereever you specify and you can then use this .cab file to restore the printers to another machine or after a hard drive crash. The tool has a friendly GUI, but can also be run from the command line.
To backup the printers to a specific location:
printmig.exe -b c:printers.cab
To restore the printers from a specific file:
printmig.exe -r c:printers.cab
It really is that easy. It can take some time to run, a couple of minutes, but that all depends on your computer speed, the number of printers, and the number of drivers.
The only place where you’re not going to be able to easily use this tool is in the instance of printers having oddball drivers. Some Dell/Lexmark printers will give an error, but they have seemed to work just fine. It’s also great for batch installation of printers. Just create a batch script and have all of your users run it. (Admin rights required.) Another problematic area comes into play with the Adobe PDF Creator printer. When moving from one version to another, you’re best off to pay attention to the order you do things. Restore the printers and then install Adobe Acrobat.
Get the tool and read more here:
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/techinfo/overview/printmigrator3.1.mspx