Recently, as part of a migration I had to migrate a printer server from a server running Windows 2003 to a Server running 2008. There were a lot of printers and I really did not want to find all the drivers again and install them on the new server one by one.
So I had one of those moments when I thought there has to be an easier way to do this, so I turned to google. Fortunately, I found that Microsoft provides a print migration tool called Print Migrator. With the Print Migrator, you can backup and restore printers from a Windows server to another. It supports Windows 2000, Windows NT; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP. However I found it also works with Windows Server 2008 as well. However you do have to use the 'Run As Administrator' option.
When backing up the printers, Print Migrator creates a CAB file including the following data:
- Printers
- Printer PortTID_MONITORS
- Print DriversTID_DRIVERS
- Print Shares
- Active Directory Print Objects
To download Microsoft Print Migrator follow this link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9B9F2925-CBC9-44DA-B2C9-FFDBC46B0B17&displaylang=en
How to backup the print server configuration
To back up a Windows printer server, follow these steps:
1. Run Printer Migrator.
2. On the Actions menu, click Backup.
3. In the Target server box, type the name of the printer server to back up by using the following UNC format: \\Servername. If you are backing up the printer configuration on a local computer, leave this box blank.
4. In the File name box, either accept the default name and location for the .cab file in which the configuration data is saved (%SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Pm\Pm.cab), or specify the file name and location that you want to use.
5. Click OK. The backup process starts. The contents of the progress report that is displayed in the lower pane of the Printer Migrator window is written to the Pm.log file. When the backup process is finished, the following text is displayed at the end of the log file: Backup complete.
How to restore the print server configuration
To restore the printer configuration to another printer server, follow these steps:
1. Start Printer Migrator.
2. On the Actions menu, click Restore.
3. In the Look in box, locate the folder that contains the .cab file in which the printer configuration data was saved. For example, if you use the default name and location for the printer configuration information, the name of the file is Pm.cab. The file is located in the following folder: %SystemRoot%\System32\Spool\Pm
4. In the File name box, type the name of the .cab file. For example, type Pm.cab.
5. In the Target server box, type the name of the destination printer server by using the following UNC format: \\Servername.
6. Select the check boxes for the options that you want to set.
7. Click Open to start the restoration operation. When the restoration process starts, Printer Migrator 2000 temporarily stops the Print Spooler service and the Print Server for Macintosh service (if it is started) on the destination computer to restore print queue information.
A progress report is displayed the lower pane of the Printer Migrator 2000 window. The contents of this report is written to the Pm.log file. When the restoration process is finished, text that is similar to the following text is displayed at the end of the log file: Restore complete.Registry restored.Starting Spooler...Spooler RunningStarting MacPrint...MacPrint Running.
