Microsoft has graced us with a new security update that patches a flaw in the printer spooler service. So far, so ordinary. This had some unforseen consequences: deploying printers in a Active Directory domain might not work as expected anymore for certain printers, logging “0x80070bcb Specified printer driver was not found and needs to be downloaded”.
Long story short: printer drivers which are not package aware will not be installed automatically by your client OS, no matter what you do, even in a GPO. The easiest fix is getting new drivers, but that’s not even possible for all devices out there. So here is a way to get the spooler service to think the driver is package aware: open the Registry, navigate to “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Enviroments\Windowsx64\Drivers\version-x\Driver name“, and edit the PrinterDriverAttributes value. Specifically, increment whatever is there by 1. After that, restart the printer spooler service.
Run gpupdate on the affected devices, the printer should be mapped fine.
I have been all over the internet and read posts from about a hundred different people in the hopes that one of them would help me with my issue. None did until I found yours. Thank you very much!