6 Replies Latest reply on Jul 3, 2013 5:53 PM by Gerald Rezes

    Migrate print server from Windows 2003 32-bit to Windows 2008 64-bit

    Paul Klump Wayfarer
    Paul Klump Jun 13, 2013 4:13 PM

      Hi all,

       

      Over this summer, I've been tasked with retiring a few of our older print servers (currently running 32-bit Windows 2003).  We've standardized on the 64-bit version of Windows 2008 for a Windows server OS, so I've been researching how to migrate the print settings on the old servers to the new servers.

       

      I found a Technet post that goes over the basic steps on this process:

       

      http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2012/04/03/migrating-print-queues-quickly-using-printbrm-configuration-files-and-the-generic-text-only-driver.aspx

       

      So I've set up a test Win2k8 64-bit machine so that I could step through the process before I schedule a date for the server migration.  Following the instructions in the Technet post, I was able to use the PRINTBRM command line utility to backup the printers settings on one of our Win2k3 print servers, then restore them onto the test Win2k8 server using PRINTBRM.  I made sure the use the NOBIN switch to make sure none of the binary files were collected during the backup, and manually installed the 64-bit versions of all printer drivers on the new server, making sure that the names of the drivers on each server matched.

       

      I went through and made sure that all of the printers and queues were copied over, and then I did some spot checks of the properties of some of the printers and queues.  While looking at the Ports section of one of the print queues on the Win2k8 server, I see that "FILE:" is selected as the port, while on the Win2k3 server, the port selected is "Pharos Queue".

       

      Has anyone else out there been able to successfully migrate their printer settings from Win2k3 to Wink28 for a Pharos print server replacement?  Thanks!

       

      Paul