Create a Shared Printer Queue Remotely in PowerShell

There are a couple of ways to create printer port and printer queue with PowerShell, depending on the OS, performance and personal preferences.

The following scripts are creating a shared printer queue on a remote print server.

1. Print Management Cmdlets

If you are with Windows 2012 or later OS, you can use print management cmdlets.

Add-PrinterPort -ComputerName $ServerName -Name $PrinterIP -PrinterHostAddress $PrinterIP  

Add-Printer -ComputerName $ServerName -Name $PrintQName -Shared -ShareName $PrintQName -Comment $PrinterIP -Location $PrintLocation -DriverName $DriverName -PortName $PrinterIP

2. WMI

On Windows Server 2008 R2 or lower, we can use WMI for printer tasks. The good thing with WMI is its simplicity, which takes strings as parameters.

Part one of this section is to create a printer port on the remote server (reference).

$ip = "10.0.0.10"
$port = [WMIClass]"\\$ComputerName\Root\cimv2:Win32_TcpIpPrinterPort"
$port.psbase.scope.options.EnablePrivileges = $true
$newport = $port.CreateInstance()
$newport.name = "$ip"
$newport.Protocol = 1
$newport.HostAddress = $ip
$newport.PortNumber = "9100"
$newport.SnmpEnabled = $false
$newport.Put()

Part two of this section is to create a printer queue using the above-created printer port (reference).

$wmi = ([WMIClass]"\\$ComputerName\Root\cimv2:Win32_Printer")
$Printer = $wmi.CreateInstance()
$Printer.Caption = $PrinterCaption
$Printer.DriverName = $DriverName (e.g. "PCL6 for Univeral Print")
$Printer.PortName = $PrinterPortName
$Printer.DeviceID = $PrinterCaption
$Printer.Network = $True
$Printer.Shared = $True
$Printer.ShareName = $PrinterCaption
$Printer.Put()

3. .NET System.Printing

.NET has a few overload methods and it is not easy to get examples for all of them. (reference)

Currently, I have not found a direct .NET method to create printer port, please use the WMI method above.

InstallPrintQueue() with 11 parameters

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Printing

[string[]]$PrintPorts = $IPAddress # one single port
$PrintProcessorName = "winprint"
$PrintQueueSeperatorFile = ""
$PrintQueueAttributes = @()
$PrintQueueAttributes += [System.Printing.PrintQueueAttributes]::Shared

[System.Printing.PrintServer]("\\$ComputerName").InstallPrintQueue( `
$PrinterName, $QueueDriver, $PrintPorts, $PrintProcessorName, `
$PrintQueueAttributes, $PrinterName, `
$Comment, $Location, $PrintQueueSeperatorFile,1,0)

Thanks.