Windows "Add a printer" wizard

Yesterday I encountered interesting situation. I prepared new Windows 2008 R2 server with print server role installed on it and started publishing printers. This task is on Windows 2008 R2 not as easy as advertised by MS. But never the less I did it.

After that I tried adding published printers to our test computer (Windows 7 x64). I started "Add a printer ..." wizard from Devices and Printers.



Click on "Add a printer"



Choose "Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer"



On my surprise there were no newly added printers to choose from. But they were listed if I clicked on "The printer that I want isn't listed" wizard.



And Next with "Find a printer in the directory, based on location feature" selected.



So the printer was listed in Active Directory but didn’t show in the wizard. This is weird!? So I started googling for a solution.

Then I found MS forum post where someone had exact same problem. This is actually not a bug but a feature :) This "Add a printer" wizard default configuration is to show 20 printers. And you can change this setting by changing this group policy "Computer configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Printers\Add Printer wizard - Network scan page (Managed network)"



Change it to a number that works best for you. In my case I changed it to 50.



Well done. But then again why going thru all this trouble if you can easily add printer just by right clicking on desired printer in Windows Explorer and choose Connect?



Have fun :)