When connecting to a printer share using a URL (http://servername/printername), XP with IE8 works fine - but Windows 7 does not. According to this KB article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/819763 , the Intranet zone must be set to Medium-low or lower in order to successfully print via RPC. If resetting the Intranet zone config to "Medium-low" default, the Windows 7 connection to the printer server is successful. Great? Actually, no it isn't. In our domain, we have custom settings for the Intranet zone provided by group policy. These settings are very much more relaxed than the default "Medium-low", so I don't understand why attempts to connect to the printer share fail when the settings are more relaxed than "Medium-low". On Windows XP systems with IE8 - and the same custom Intranet zone settings, connections to the print share work fine. Note, this is not a driver issue as Windows 7 will add the printer successfully when the Intranet zone is using default "Medium-low" settings. Also note, I am not looking for a work-around. Ideally, we want the same process XP users have been using to add printers to work on Windows 7. Why might Windows 7 behave differently than XP in this regard - and how can this be overcome?

I found the one setting that apparently is causing this headache: "Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe for scripting" must be either "Disable" or "Prompt". If "Enable" is selected, the problem above exists (but only in Win7). So why does a setting of "Enable" work in XP?

It should be related to the mechanism of the printer driver.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

What should be related to the mechanism of the printer driver? I should expand on what the environment is: The print server is configured with Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) with the default webpage enabled - allowing users to click a link from a company webpage and go to the printer webpage for a specific printer. When the user clicks "Connect" to install a printer, a prompt appears: When the "Initialize and script ActiveX not marked as safe..." setting is 'Enabled', the prompt that appears is "Do you want to add a printer connection to http://server/printers/share/.printer?" - and then when responding 'Yes', the printer driver either fails to load saying driver files are not available for the current CPU platform - or if a driver was already loaded previously, the mapping is succussul but some printing preferences are not present (the same issue in the KB article mentioned above). If the ActiveX setting is set to 'Disable' or 'Prompt', the "Do you want to add a printer connection to...." prompt looks like this: http://server/share? (notice there is a difference) - and the printer driver is installed successfully - and/or if previously installed, the preferences are available. None of these differences occur with XP - only Windows 7 (64bit). Given the process works fine, even when the ActiveX setting is set to 'Disable', I don't see how this is driver related? The fact the problem only exists when the ActiveX setting is set to 'Enable' is befuddling... Thanks for any help in understing this.