Moving printers from one server to another can be a long tedious process if you do it manually.

If you use Print Migrator 3.1, it’s easy. Download the file from the link, it’s the actual program. No install needed. Yep, it’s only 211k.

Step 1:

Backup the current printers.

It dumps everything to a cab file you specify, i just called my printers.cab

Then it runs and runs and runs, scrolling files pass your eyes…..

Finally, you have a cab file.

In my case I had 12 printers, that made a 95 Meg file.

Then you copy that cab file and the print migration file from the source server (old) to the target server (new)

(i just put it all on the desktop for easy moving)

On the target server, you rerun the application, but choose restore. Pick the cab file you copied over, and fill in the field at the bottom of the box with the new server’s name. “\\newserver”

Then click open. It restores everything identical… it creates the necessary tcp/ip ports, drivers, names, shared name, everything….

This tool would be a good mechanism for disaster recovery of a server. I’m not sure if the system state restores all the printers and drivers this nicely. I don’t think it does.

So having this cab file backed up would be an ace in your pocket if you ever had to restore the server.