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Printer Profiles and Discovery

Pro & Enterprise Only

This feature is available exclusively in ScrewDrivers Pro and Enterprise editions.

Printer profiles are one of ScrewDrivers' most powerful features for ensuring consistent printing experiences across your organization. When you create a printer profile, you're capturing a specific set of printer settings—like paper size, color preferences, duplex mode—and storing them in the database so they can be automatically applied whenever users connect to their assigned printers. This reference provides complete technical details for creating, managing, and troubleshooting printer profiles using the ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery tool.

Overview​

You'll use printer profiles to enforce default printer settings that persist across sessions and workstations. A printer profile has two components: a driver profile that contains the actual printer settings and driver information, and an association between that driver profile and one or more printer objects in your ScrewDrivers database. Once you've created a printer profile, you can assign it to users through ScrewDrivers Administration, ensuring they always get printers configured exactly as you've specified.

Printer profiles work with all three printer types ScrewDrivers manages: APF (Advanced Print Features) print server printers that use manufacturer drivers, non-APF print server printers that use the ScrewDrivers universal driver, and direct printers that connect via IP. While users can override profile settings during a print job, the profile ensures their printers always start with your organization's preferred defaults.

Printer Profile Compatibility​

The key to successful printer profile deployment is understanding compatibility. For a driver profile to associate correctly with a printer object, both must use the same underlying printer driver. By default, ScrewDrivers checks four compatibility criteria when building a printer: driver name, driver environment (32-bit or 64-bit), driver version, and the size of the settings structure that stores printer preferences. If any of these don't match, the system won't apply the profile and will log the failure (if printer building logs are enabled).

APF settings add another compatibility consideration. When you turn APF on for a print server printer, it uses the manufacturer's driver. Turn APF off, and it switches to the ScrewDrivers universal driver. If you change a printer's APF setting after creating profiles, those profiles will no longer be compatible because the underlying driver changed. You'll need to create new profiles that match the new APF state.

Configuring Compatibility Requirements​

Tricerat recognizes that strict compatibility checking can sometimes cause problems—for instance, a minor driver version update might prevent an otherwise valid profile from working. You can adjust the compatibility requirements through a registry setting:

  • Registry Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Tricerat\ScrewDrivers
  • Value Name: ProfileRequireDriverMatch
  • Value Type: REG_DWORD
  • Available Values:
    • 0: Disables mismatch detection entirely (least strict)
    • 1: Requires only driver name, environment (32/64-bit), and settings structure size to match
    • 2 (default): Requires driver name, environment, version, and settings structure size to match (most strict)

In most environments, you'll want to leave this at the default value of 2. Only reduce the strictness if you're experiencing compatibility issues after minor driver updates and you've verified the profiles still work correctly.

Creating Printer Profiles for APF and Direct Printers​

Creating a printer profile for an APF print server printer or direct printer is straightforward and consists of two distinct processes: first creating the driver profile with all your preferred settings, then associating that driver profile with one or more printer objects in ScrewDrivers Administration.

The only requirement is that the printer you use to create the driver profile must exist on the same workstation where you're running ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery. This is because the tool needs to access the printer's configuration dialog to capture your settings.

Creating the Driver Profile​

Start by launching ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery on a workstation that has access to a printer with the driver you want to profile. When you first open the Profiles tab, it'll be empty. After you've created profiles, this tab will show all driver profiles stored in the ScrewDrivers database, and you can use the filter field at the top to quickly find specific profiles.

Click Create to open the Create Profile dialog. You'll need to provide a name for the driver profile—choose something descriptive that indicates what settings it contains, like "HP-Color-Duplex-A4" or "Xerox-Grayscale-Landscape." You can also add an optional description for additional context.

From the Printer dropdown, select the printer you want to use for creating the profile. This determines which configuration dialog you'll see and which driver the profile will be compatible with. Click Configure to open that printer's Printing Preferences dialog.

Now configure all the default settings you want this profile to enforce. Common options include:

  • Color Mode: Color or grayscale printing
  • Orientation: Portrait or landscape
  • Paper Size: Letter, A4, Legal, etc.
  • Duplex Mode: Single-sided, double-sided long edge, double-sided short edge
  • Print Quality: Draft, normal, or high quality
  • Paper Source: Which tray to pull from

The available options vary by manufacturer and driver. APF printers will show the manufacturer's native settings, while non-APF printers show ScrewDrivers' universal driver options. Configure everything you want, then close the Printing Preferences dialog to return to the Create Profile dialog. Click Create to save the driver profile to the database.

The Profiles tab refreshes, and your new driver profile appears in the list. You're now ready to associate it with printer objects.

Associating the Driver Profile with Printers​

Open ScrewDrivers Administration and navigate to the Printers tab. You have two ways to apply printer profiles: you can set them directly on individual printer objects, or you can set them at the assignment level when assigning printers to users. The second method is generally more efficient because it lets you configure the profile association at the same time you're making printer assignments.

To set a profile directly on a printer object, select the printer in the Objects pane. In the Information pane, you'll find a Printer Profile dropdown that lists all compatible driver profiles from the database. Select the appropriate profile and save your changes.

To set a profile at assignment time, go to the Assignments tab and drag a printer to a user or group. In the assignment dialog that appears, you'll see a Printer Profile option where you can choose which profile to apply for this particular assignment. This approach is particularly useful when different users need the same physical printer configured with different default settings.

Creating Printer Profiles for non-APF Printers​

If you've turned off APF for a print server printer, it'll use ScrewDrivers' universal driver instead of the manufacturer's driver. Creating a printer profile for these non-APF printers requires a slightly different approach because you need to capture the settings while the printer is actively built in a user session on the terminal server.

Prerequisites​

Before creating a non-APF printer profile, ensure these requirements are in place:

  1. Administrator Test Account: You'll need a personal administrator account on the terminal server your users log into—something like a "Test" account that you use for configuration testing.

  2. Printer Assignments: The non-APF print server printer must already be assigned to the appropriate users through ScrewDrivers Administration.

  3. ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery: This tool must be installed on the terminal server where users log in.

Creating the Driver Profile​

Log into the terminal server using your administrator test account. Since you've already assigned the non-APF printer to this account, ScrewDrivers will build it automatically during your session. Verify the printer appears in the system before continuing.

Launch ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery and open the Profiles tab. Click Create to open the Create Profile dialog, then enter a descriptive name and optional description for the profile.

From the Printer dropdown, select the non-APF printer that was built during your session. Because APF is turned off, this printer uses the ScrewDrivers universal driver. Click Configure to open the ScrewDrivers Printing Preferences dialog—this will look different from manufacturer-specific dialogs since it's ScrewDrivers' own interface.

Configure all the default settings you want for this profile: grayscale versus color, landscape versus portrait, paper size, and so on. Close the Printing Preferences dialog when you're finished, then click Create in the Create Profile dialog to save the driver profile to the database.

The Profiles tab refreshes and displays your new profile. Log off the terminal server—you're done with this step.

Associating the Driver Profile with the Printer Object​

Back on your administrative workstation, open ScrewDrivers Administration and go to the Settings tab. Printer profiles are displayed in the Objects pane under the Printer Profiles heading, organized by creator: Admin-created or User-created profiles.

Right-click on Printer Profiles and select New Printer Profile from the context menu. The New Printer Profile dialog opens. Select your newly created driver profile from the Driver Profile dropdown, then click Add.

The printer profile is added to the database as an Admin profile. You might need to expand the Admin heading to see it in the list. Finally, assign this printer profile directly to the same users or groups who have the non-APF printer assigned. Both the printer and its profile need to be assigned to the same owners for the profile to take effect.

Managing Driver Profiles and Printer Profiles​

Once you've created driver and printer profiles, you'll occasionally need to edit or delete them. As a ScrewDrivers administrator, you can manage both Admin-created and User-created profiles, while regular users can only manage profiles they created themselves.

Editing Driver Profiles​

You can edit a driver profile whether or not it's currently in use by a printer profile. When you edit a profile that's in use, your changes take effect immediately for all printers using that profile.

Open ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery and go to the Profiles tab. Select the driver profile you want to modify and click Edit. The Edit Profile dialog opens, where you can:

  • Change the Name or Description: Update the profile's metadata to better reflect its purpose or settings.
  • Modify Settings: Click Configure to open the Printing Preferences dialog for the profile's associated printer. Make your changes, close the Preferences dialog, then click Save in the Edit Profile dialog.

The Profiles tab refreshes, showing your updated profile. Any printers using this profile will immediately start using the new settings for newly built printer instances.

Deleting Unused Driver Profiles​

If a driver profile isn't associated with any printer profiles, you can delete it directly from ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery. Open the Profiles tab, select the driver profile or profiles you want to remove (you can SHIFT-click or CTRL-click to select multiple, or click the checkbox next to "Name" to select all), then click Remove Profiles.

There's no confirmation prompt—the selected profiles are deleted immediately from the database. Make absolutely certain you've selected the correct profiles before clicking Remove.

Deleting In-Use Driver Profiles​

You can't delete a driver profile that's currently associated with a printer profile. If you try, you'll see an error message that explicitly names at least one of the printer profiles using that driver profile. You must first delete the printer profiles, then you can delete the driver profile.

Open ScrewDrivers Administration and go to the Settings tab. Expand the Printer Profiles section if needed, then expand either Admin or User to see all available printer profiles. Select the printer profile or profiles you want to delete (you can SHIFT-click or CTRL-click to select multiple), right-click, and choose Delete from the context menu.

The printer profiles are deleted immediately from the database. Now you can return to ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery and delete the driver profile following the steps in the previous section.

ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery Interface Reference​

The ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery application provides a centralized interface for managing drivers, printers, driver profiles, and printer assignments. The main window contains several tabs that organize these different management functions.

Main Window Tabs​

The application includes these primary tabs:

  • Drivers Tab: Lists all print drivers imported from local workstations into the ScrewDrivers database. You'll use this tab to import new drivers or remove drivers you no longer need.

  • Printers Tab: Shows all network printers imported into the ScrewDrivers database, displaying both the printer name and IP address. This is where you import new network printers or remove printers that are no longer available.

  • Assignments Tab: Displays the relationship between printers and their assigned drivers. You'll use this tab to assign drivers to printers, view existing assignments, or clear driver assignments.

  • Profiles Tab: Lists all driver profiles stored in the ScrewDrivers database. This is where you create new driver profiles, edit existing ones, or delete profiles you no longer need.

  • Settings Tab: Displays the version of ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery currently installed and provides options for filtering what information appears on other tabs. This is also where you configure which types of network printers the application discovers.

Filter Fields​

Every tab except the About tab includes a filter field at the top. You can enter text to limit what items appear on that tab—for instance, filtering the Drivers tab to show only HP drivers or filtering the Printers tab to show only printers at a specific IP range.

As you type in the filter field, the results update dynamically. The filter matches against the exact order of characters you enter, but it's not case-sensitive, and the search string can appear anywhere in the results. For example, entering "JET" on the Drivers tab would return "HP Officejet," "Color LASERJET," and any other driver with those three consecutive letters.

Note that filter sensitivity varies by tab. On the Printers tab, the filter searches across both Printer Name and IP Address. On the Assignments tab, it searches Printer Name and IP Address but not the assigned driver names.

Settings Tab Options​

The Settings tab controls both display options and printer discovery behavior. Your selections here are "sticky"—they persist after you log out and log back into ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery.

List View Options​

These options determine what information appears on the Assignments tab:

  • Hide Win32 Drivers (selected by default): When enabled, 32-bit drivers don't appear in the driver dropdown for each printer on the Assignments tab. Clear this checkbox to make 32-bit drivers available for assignment—they'll appear in a separate x86 dropdown list for each printer.

  • Hide Printers with Drivers (not selected by default): When enabled, any printer that already has a driver assigned (32-bit or 64-bit) doesn't appear on the Assignments tab. This is useful when you want to focus only on printers that still need driver assignments.

Printer Query Type​

By default, ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery is configured to discover both Bonjour-compatible and IPP-compatible network printers on the same subnet. You can clear one or both checkboxes if you don't want the application to discover certain printer types.

IPP IP Addresses & Masks​

By default, printer discovery only finds IPP printers on the same subnet as the workstation running ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery. To include IPP printers on other subnets, you can add custom IP address masks:

  • Click Add an Option to create a new blank entry where you can specify an IP address and its corresponding subnet mask.
  • To delete masks, select the checkbox next to each option you want to remove (or click the checkbox next to "IP Address" to select all), then click Delete.

This feature is particularly useful in multi-site or complex network environments where printers might be distributed across different subnets but need to be managed from a central location.