Windows 2000 automatically publishes a computer's share printers in Active Directory.
If you Disable the Automatically publish new printers in Active Directory Group Policy, at Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Printers, the Add Printer wizard does NOT automatically publish printers, but you can manually publish them.
This policy is mapped in the registry via the Auto Publishing value name, a REG_DWORD data type, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\Wizard. If the policy is Disabled, the data value is 0. A data value of 1, or if Auto Publishing is not in the registry, means that the policy is enabled.
To prevent shared printers from being published, Disable the Allow printers to be published Group Policy at Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Printers. This sets the PublishPrinters value name, a REG_DWORD data type, to 0, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers.
