Windows – Printer GPO Error Code ‘0x80070bcb’

Here's what you have to do to get Windows 7 to be printer friendly with a Windows 2003 domain/print server.

1. Load up Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 on your Windows 7 machine
2. Create a PolicyDefinitions folder in %systemroot%\sysvol\domain\policies\ on your domain controller.
3. From the Windows 7 machine, you want to copy everything in %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\ into \\\domain\sysvol\domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
4. You'll need to install the Group Policy Management Console from the Add/Remove Programs (Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off)
5. After that from the Group Policy Management Console on your Windows 7 computer, you'll want to create a new GPO for windows 7 machines and apply the following.

Computer configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Printers

Set the following options:

• Only use package point and print - disabled
• Package point and print - approved servers - disabled
• Point and print restrictions - disabled

EDIT

I would also like to add I've had a lot of trouble with this and want this answer to be complete. I've had issues with users not being able to print randomly. It would remove the printer and when reading it from GPO we would see the following suppressed message:

The user 'printername' preference item in the 'Site-User-Preferences-Policy {Policy-ID}' Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x800706ba The RPC server is unavailable.' This error was suppressed.

When I would manually try to add it from the print server I would then have the message:

Connect to Printer

Windows cannot connect to the printer

Operation failed with error 0x0000002

After chasing this around for a few weeks, I found someone else had the problem. The issue is corrected the following Microsoft Hotfix:

A computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 intermittently cannot use a shared network printer to print.

Update for Windows 7 SP1

Windows 7 SP1 includes this hotfix, so if you're having this problem with SP1 you need to keep digging. Took me a while to figure out, so thought I'd save others the trouble. I'll repost here if I figure out why this happens on SP1.

See: Print Processor

Either the default print processor is missing or corrupt (KB153355) or that driver you are trying to install with that print queue requires its own print processor that is unavailable on your client machine. This can be caused for a number of reasons, but in my experience it is most commonly a 32-bit/64-bit mismatch or you are missing the driver's specific print processor. I generally unpack print drivers that come in .EXEs using 7Zip, locate the appropriate DLLs and the .INF file to avoid installing all the other packaged crap that comes with print drivers these days. Unfortunately, this method of manual driver installation will not install that drivers print processor and not all drivers can use the default Windows print processor.

You can use Print Management to see what drivers are available and what print processor you are using. Verify that the print processor is available on the client. Try attaching ProcMon to the spoolsv.exe on your client and manually add the printer. Printing Services errors are notoriously vague and misleading. Looking at the logs in Microsoft-Windows-PrintService should help you narrow your search in ProcMon, as often Windows will log what .DLL from the driver failed to find the print processor.