Solved Mapping network printers fails when using custom driver store location

[Boostmr2]

When mapping all my network printers, I am immediately priompted to trust the print driver and allow install, and iot maps successfully.

I am using a network driver store for non print drivers, located at \\server1\drivers"]\\server1\drivers. On client computers I update the DevicePath value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft Windows\CurrentVersion, to "%SystemRoot%\inf;\\server1\drivers". After implementing this registry key and restarting print spooler, mapping network printers fails. It just sits there seaching for driver, but never finds one. I'm assuming it is seaching the driver store (which is small, shouldn't take long at all) and never actually uses the driver from the print server like it should.

Any idea why this would happen? I'm expect when mapping a printer, it would use the driver presented by the print server first anyways. Besides that, it shouldn't search the driver store for so long.

 

[Boostmr2]

Update:

I finally located the issue. First off, Windows will search the drivers stores first, to see if the driver is already downloaded and just not installed yet. This explains why my network location was searched before accepting the driver from the print server.

Secondly, the search of the driver store was taking so long because it was a network location. When specifying a local location for the custom driver store, such as c:\drivers, it worked fine. when using my network location, it took forever. INDEXING. If the network location is index'd or alternatively made available offline, the search completed immediately.

Fixed my own issue, but useful info for anyone else doing this.