Question : Unable to add network printer with User or Power User rights

Hello,

We have a Windows 2003 AD Domain with Windows Vista Business PCs.  Adding network printers with local admin rights on the Vista machines work fine, but we don't want users to have admin rights to be able to add printers.  We have already verified that Power Users and regular users don't have rights to add network printers shared from a server.  Windows XP allowed adding shared network printers with plain user rights.  We have done some research, and we are wondering if either of the following has anything to do with this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
EnableLinkedConnections=DWORD:1

or

Turning off User Access Control

Thanks,
Mike

Answer : Unable to add network printer with User or Power User rights

"Windows XP allowed adding shared network printers with plain user rights" - this is not correct, you had to have at least power users rights. And this is the problem, the group power users does not exist anymore in vista. It's there, but only for compatibility reasons with no effect other than user membership.

As far as I know, there is no workaround. (It's the same for sharing folders, by the way).

What you could do is use the 2003 domain to assign/deploy printers via gpo - if you run the R2 version of 2003. See http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Managing-Printers-Windows-Server-2003-R2.html