Pharos Administrator Error: "Unable to load the list of print drivers. The RPC server is unavailable."

Problem:

When using Pharos Administrator to manage printers and/or Spool Queues on a remote Print Server, attempts to add a new queue or printer fail with the error:

"Unable to load the list of print drivers. The RPC server is unavailable."

Information:

This can occur for several possible reasons, the two items below are what we have encountered.

1. In order for the Pharos Administrator to be able to add Spool Queues and printers, it must have a hole through the Windows Firewall.

   The firewall exception required is for 'remoteadmin' and the command line command to enable it (must be done on the Print Server machine) is:

   netsh firewall set service type = remoteadmin mode = enable

   If this command returns OK, it was successful; if you get Access Denied you do not have Administrative rights to configure Windows Firewall.

2. This can also occur when the Printers folder is not visible on the network, because no printer has yet been shared on the system. To resolve the issue, create a dummy printer on the new server and share it. The dummy printer can be deleted immediately, as long as the server is not rebooted before a real shared printer object (such as a Pharos Spool Queue) is added.