App-V and Adobe PDF Printer

 I was re-reading my last post about sequencing Adobe Acrobat 9 and I think the part about the Adobe PDF Printer is a little bit confusing.

So in this post I will demonstrate how to add the Adobe PDF Printer with Adobe Acrobat sequenced.

The whole procedure is kind of tricky and long so make sure you follow all the steps as I describe here.
You can check how to sequence Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro here and Adobe Acrobat X Pro here.

Also the methods are slightly different for 32 and 64-bit.
First of all download the Windows 2003 Resource Kit from here.
Now install it. If you are in a 64-bit OS you are going to get a warning that there are known compatibility issues with this application. Install it anyway.

Create a temporary folder. I will name it C:\PDFPrinter. Copy Prnadmin.dll and portmgr.vbs from C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools to C:\PDFPrinter. (In a 32-bit OS the path would be only Program Files without the (x86))

Now you will have to install Adobe Acrobat to one machine to capture some PDF Printer settings and copy the Adobe PDF drivers.

After you install it, go to Device and Printers.

Right click the Adobe PDF printer and select Printer Properties. Click on the Advanced tab and untick the option Enable advanced printing features. Click on OK.

Now open a elevated command prompt and type:

RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /Ss /n  "Adobe PDF"  /a  "file.dat" 2

Now copy the file.dat file to C:\PDFPrinter.

Also copy the content of the Adobe PDF folder from C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 10.0\Acrobat\Xtras\Adobe PDF to C:\PDFPrinter

Now copy the script below to a text file, name it PDFPrinter.vbs and save it to C:\PDFPrinter

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
 dim CurrentDir, strComputer, objWMIService, WshShell, RegPrnCmd, colInstalledPrinters, AddPrinterCmd, LoadCfgCmd, AddPortCmd
 CurrentDir = CHR(34) & "C:\PDFPrinter\"
 strComputer = "."
 Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
'******** Register prnadmin.dll file on client computer *******
 Set WshShell = Wscript.CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
 RegPrnCmd = "regsvr32 /s " &  CurrentDir & "Prnadmin.dll"
 WshShell.Run RegPrnCmd,1,TRUE
 '************** Create the port first *******************************
set colInstalledPrinters = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_Printer Where DriverName = 'Adobe PDF Converter'")
If colInstalledPrinters.Count = 0 Then
AddPortCmd = "C:\Windows\Syswow64\cscript.exe " & CurrentDir & "portmgr.vbs" & CHR(34) & " -a -p " & CHR(34) & "Adobe PDF" & CHR(34) & " -t Local"
   WshShell.Run AddPortCmd
AddPrinterCmd = "C:\Windows\Syswow64\RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /if /b " & CHR(34) & "Adobe PDF" & CHR(34) &" /f " & CurrentDir & "adobepdf.inf" & CHR(34) & " /r " & CHR(34) & "Adobe PDF" & CHR(34) & " /m " & CHR(34) & "Adobe PDF Converter" & CHR(34)
LoadCfgCmd = "C:\Windows\Syswow64\RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /Sr /n " & CHR(34) & "Adobe PDF" & CHR(34) &" /a " & CurrentDir & "file.dat" & CHR(34) & " 2"
   Wscript.Sleep(5000)
   WshShell.Run AddPrinterCmd
   Wscript.Sleep(8000)
   WshShell.Run LoadCfgCmd
End If
Set objWMIService = Nothing
Set wshShell = Nothing

This script is for a 64-bit OS. If you are using a 32-bit OS you don't the full path in the AddPortCmd, AddPrinterCmd and LoadCfgCmd. So instead of using C:\Windows\Syswow64\cscript.exe and C:\Windows\Syswow64\RUNDLL32 use just cscript.exe and RUNDLL32.

Now all you have to do is copy the C:\PDFPrinter folder to the C drive of the computer where you want the PDF printer installed and run PDFPrinter.vbs. Make sure you change the CurrentDir in the script if you don't use the same folder name or location I'm using.

Of course you can deploy this using SCCM or as one of my readers does, install it to a template VDI.