I find the printer management scripts included with Server 2008 bothersome. However, until we get to Server 2012, with its shiny new printer management cmdlets, I’ll keep trying to make do with what we have.

I was pleased to find an old post on the Printing Team’s blog about using the .Net System.Printing namespace with PowerShell to automate things. Some brief experimenting looks promising.

For the moment, in order to switch the printer driver version on about fifteen printers (all the same model), I used PowerShell and WMI, like this:

PS C:\> $printers = Get-WmiObject Win32_Printer -filter "Name like 'RL -%'"
PS C:\> $printers | sort Name | ft Name, DriverName -a
PS C:\> $printers | Where DriverName -eq 'HP Universal Printing PCL 6 (v5.3)' | % {
>> $_.DriverName = 'HP Universal Printing PCL 6 (v5.6.1)'
>> $_.Put()
>> }

This took quite a while to execute, but did work. What I need to do now is modify the permissions on each printQueue. I doubt I can leverage Get-ACL and Set-ACL for this.

We have a number of 32-bit Windows 2008 print servers that we want to migrate to Windows Server 2012, for the printer management PowerShell cmdlets, among other things. I found a helpful blog post about using the PRINTBRM utility to migrate print queues, which mentions that you need to have both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers versions of all the drivers in order to migrate from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS instance.

I wrote a little script to quickly show me which print drivers need a 64-bit version installed. It can take a moment to run if you have many printers configured.

UPDATE: I made a couple changes, most notably that the count of printers using a driver is now optional (since it can take a while on a system with lots of printers).

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Lists printer drivers,  whether 32- and 64-bit versions are installed,
and how many printers are using each driver.


.PARAMETER Printers
Includes a counter of the printers using each printer driver. On a system
with many installed printers, this can take a a little time, so this 
functionality is optional.


.EXAMPLE
PS C:\local\scripts> .\Get-PrinterDriverArchitecture.ps1 | format-table -auto

Name                                       x86   x64
----                                       ---   ---
Brother HL-5250DN                         True False
Epson LQ-570+ ESC/P 2                     True False
HP Business Inkjet 2230/2280              True False
HP Business Inkjet 2250 (PCL5C)           True  True
HP Business Inkjet 2800 PCL 5             True False

This command lists the installed printer drivers, and whether 32-bit (x86)
or 64-bit (x64) drivers are available.


.EXAMPLE
PS C:\local\scripts> .\Get-PrinterDriverArchitecture.ps1 | where x64 -eq $false | ft -a

Name                                      x86   x64
----                                      ---   ---
Brother HL-5250DN                        True False
Epson LQ-570+ ESC/P 2                    True False
HP Business Inkjet 2230/2280             True False
HP Business Inkjet 2800 PCL 5            True False

This command uses the Where[-Object] cmdlet to filter out those drivers that
have a 64-bit driver installed.


.EXAMPLE
PS C:\local\scripts> .\Get-PrinterDriverArchitecture.ps1 -Printers | ft -a
Enumerating printers:
    WID - Kyocera TASKalfa 3050ci KX
    WC - Kyocera TASKalfa 300ci KX
    UFS - Canon iR-ADV C5035
    ...

Name                                       x86   x64 Printers
----                                       ---   --- --------
Brother HL-5250DN                         True False        5
Epson LQ-570+ ESC/P 2                     True False        0
HP Business Inkjet 2230/2280              True False        1
HP Business Inkjet 2250 (PCL5C)           True  True        0
HP Business Inkjet 2800 PCL 5             True False        1

This command includes the -Printers switch parameter to add a count of
the printers using each driver. Enumerating the printers can take a while
if there are lots of them installed, so this behavior is optional.


.NOTES
 - Author    : Geoffrey.Duke@uvm.edu
 - Mod. Date : May 28, 2013
#>

param( [switch] $printers )

$wmi_drivers = get-wmiobject Win32_PrinterDriver -Property Name
$drivers = @{}
foreach ($driver in $wmi_drivers) {
    # Isolate the driver name and platform
    $name,$null,$platform = $driver.Name -split ','

    if ( -not $drivers[$name] ) {
        switch ( $platform ) {
            'Windows NT x86' { $drivers[$name] = [ordered]@{ 
                                 'Name'=$name; 'x86'=$true; 'x64'=$false }; break }
            'Windows x64'    { $drivers[$name] = [ordered]@{ 
                                 'Name'=$name; 'x86'=$false; 'x64'=$true }; break }
             default         { write-warning "Unexpect platform $platform on driver $name"}
        }
    }
    else {
        switch ( $platform ) {
            'Windows x64'    { $drivers[$name]['x64'] = $true; break }
            'Windows NT x86' { $drivers[$name]['x86'] = $true; break }
             default         { write-warning "Unexpect platform $platform on driver $name"}
        }
    }
}

if ( $printers ) {
    # Initialize all printer counts
    $drivers.keys | foreach { $drivers[$_]['Printers'] = 0 }
    # Add a count of the number of printers using each driver
    # With some progress info
    write-host 'Enumerating printers:'
    $count = 0
    get-wmiobject Win32_Printer -Property Name,DriverName | foreach { 
        write-host "    $($_.Name)"  -foreground darkgray
        $drivers[$_.DriverName]['Printers']++ 
        $count++
    }

    write-host "Retrieved $count printers"
}

# Output collection of objects
$drivers.keys | sort | foreach { New-Object PSObject -Property $drivers[$_] } 
 

I hope this is useful to others.