SUMMARY
I'm trying to script creation of a local printer object on Windows
7, and I keep getting a bogus error about the driver not being
available. But if I add the printer in the GUI, it works just fine.
ENVIRONMENT
Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit
PDFCreator 0.9.8
BACKGROUND
Our ERP system needs a printer object named "GSView". When that
object is printed to, a PDF is created, and then a post-processing
command is run to view and possibly save/print said PDF.
To make this happen, we use the PDFCreator printer driver and the
included REDMON port monitor. We name the local port "GSView:". I
use a script to create the printer object. This worked fine on XP,
but is not cooperating on Win 7.
PDFCreator is already installed and -- as far as I can tell --
working fine. There are newer releases of PDFCreator, but I've been
avoiding updating because the publisher got into the suspicious
software components game (possible adware/spyware/etc.). The release
we have is clean.
INVESTIGATION
My first attempt was to use the PrnMngr.VBS that's included in
Windows 7 (under %SystemRoot%\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\en-en\).
It follows the same syntax as on XP (and it is what we use there).
The command I try is:
CSCRIPT PrnMngr.VBS -a -m PDFCreator -p GSView -r GSView:
When run, that spits out the following error:
Unable to add printer GSView Error 0x80041001 Generic failure
Operation PutInstance
Provider Win32 Provider
Description The printer driver is unknown.
Win32 error code 1797
The error says the driver is unknown, but I can't see why it thinks
that. There is a working "PDFCreator" printer object already. If I
use "PrnMngr.VBS -l", I see the "PDFCreator" printer listed, with the
driver name "PDFCreator". If I use "PrnDrvr.VBS -l", I see the driver
listed there, too. The name is "PDFCreator,3,Windows x64". Normally
just the part before the first comma is used, but I tried passing the
whole thing (quoted) with the same results. (Without quotes, it
rejects the command line as invalid.)
Plus, as I said, if I add the printer object in the GUI, it works just
fine. Print Management -> Print Servers -> local -> Printers, Add
Printer, existing port "GSView:", existing driver "PDFCreator". Boom,
it works.
Likewise, Start -> Devices and Printers -> Add a printer -> local,
existing port "GSView:". PDFCreator isn't available as a driver,
because there's no INF, but if I add it as a "Generic Text Only", and
then use Printer Properties to change the driver to "PDFCreator"
(which is listed), it works.
I also tracked down an alternate method, using this command:
RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /u /if /b GSView /r GSView: /m PDFCreator
That yields a GUII message box which says:
Operation could not be completed (error
0x000000705). Windows cannot locate a suitable
printer driver. Contact your administrator for help
locating and installing a suitable driver.
This seems to be another way of saying the same thing as before.
Anyone have any ideas on how to convince Windows that the driver
that's already installed is really, truly suitable? I interpret the
fact that it works in the GUI to mean it must be possible.
-- Ben
