Scan Network For Printers And Retrieve Printer Information

[blounty]

Hi All,

I am really stumped. Is it possible to scan a network to pick up printers connected to it and then retrieve the printers information (name, ink levels, serial)? i hav been searching for a way to do this for a while now.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Alex

 

[blounty]

Sorry, Forgot to mention using vb.net vs 2005.

Thanks all.

 

[KDavie]

I'm not sure how you would go about getting the serial number, but you can scan for the printers using WMI:

 Private Sub GetNetworkPrinters()
        Dim printers As Management.ManagementObjectCollection = Nothing
        Dim searcher As Management.ManagementObjectSearcher = Nothing
        Dim printer As Management.ManagementObject = Nothing
        searcher = New Management.ManagementObjectSearcher("Select * from Win32_Printer")
        printers = searcher.Get
        Dim strPrinters As String = Nothing
        Dim name As String = Nothing
        Dim errorState As Integer = Nothing
        Dim ink As String = Nothing
        For Each printer In printers
            errorState = printer.Properties("DetectedErrorState").Value
            If errorState = 5 Then
                ink = "low"
            ElseIf errorState = 6 Then
                ink = "No Ink"
            Else
                ink = "Acceptable Ink Level"
            End If
            name = printer.Properties("Name").Value
            strPrinters &= "name: " & name & " ink: " & ink & vbCrLf
        Next

    End Sub

For a complete list of available properties check out:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/En-US/library/aa394363.aspx

Also, if you want to quickly list attached printers, you can do something like this:

  Dim objPrint As New System.Drawing.Printing.PrinterSettings()
        Dim strItem As String
        Dim strPrinters As String
        For Each strItem In objPrint.InstalledPrinters
            strPrinters &= strItem & vbCrLf

        Next

Hope this helps.

Regards,

-Kevin

 

[blounty]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for that! that worked great and picked up the network i have setup up on my computer. is there a way of getting all printers on the network? by searching in a range of ip's or along those lines?

Thank you so much for your help.

Alex

 

[blounty]

anyone help? please....