rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry to map network printers

Have you ever used rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry to map a network printer on a computer? This command can map a printer for every user and can also be used to remove that same mapping. When you think about it, this behavior is a little odd.

I say that because mapping printers is a user profile based action. If you want a printer to show up for everyone, you have to install it on the computer directly. But somehow this command gets around that.

I was writing a DSC component that used this command and I ran into an issue trying to verify a printer was mapped. CIM_Printer and Win32_Printer could not find the printer when ran in the context of DSC. I suspect that the system account can't see the printer. Once a user is logged in, the connection to that printer is established. I had to find another way to identify these mapped printers.

My first thought was to fire up the Sysinternals procmon.exe tool. Even after filtering it down to just rundll32 related activity, nothing jumped out to me. So I started searching the registry. It didn't take long and I found what I was looking for.

"HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Connections"

That registry location contains the list of printer connections that should be mapped for each user. Those printers are kept separate from the locally installed printers on the system. I started checking this location and everything started working for me.

If you came here trying to map a printer in this way, here are the commands that I used

$path = "\\server\printer name"

# Map a printer
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /n$path 

# remove the printer
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /gd /n$path

# list printer connections
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ge