On a brand new machine with a first-time install of Vista Business x64…this wasn't happening the first day I installed Vista. I could run the printer wizard and connect to the printer fine, I just didn't find the correct driver until the next day.

Now I'm having a problem with connecting to a shared printer (on a 2003SP2 server) and all of the typical printer ports are "missing". I've searched the forum and have already updated the registry with the appropriate TCP/IP key that was exported from an XP machine. This doesn't seem to have worked as I only have one option when creating a new port (Adobe PDF).

Running the add a printer wizard-->network printer, finds the shared printers, but I get a message saying that Vista "can not connect to the printer, make sure that the printer is on and connected to the server…"; however, I still have access to shared drives on the same server. Browsing to the server through "network" I've noticed that the shared printers don't show up in the printers folder, only in the base server folder (they seem to be shared drives??)--checking on the actual server, I noticed that the folder that they exist in is called "printers and faxes" whereas Vista seems to be looking for "Printers"; could this be an issue?

I can ping the IP address of the printer and set it up if I enable the LPR Port monitor--this isn't a good option because we run print tracking software (which was installed the first day before I tried setting up the printers the first time) which doesn't catch the prints sent from the workstation this way and doesn't enable me to input the correct project number.



What can I do?

thanks for your help

I've got the ports back--I turned on my machine today and immediately uninstalled the print tracking software, then I checked print management and all the ports I would expect are there. Either something miraculous happened overnight with the machine off or the print tracking software was interfering; will have to check with our service provider for an updated version or any known issues with the software.

If I learn anything else specific, I'll post here