In Windows 2008, there is a nifty looking tool for printer management and migration. It looks very good for daily operations, using it for migration, is well not so good.
You can add all your Windows 2003 and later print servers here to manage. To migrate the print queues, you have to Export/ backup the print queues and later at the destination, Import/restore. The GUI version during Export may stop mysteriously and ask you to check the event view for more details. I have encountered in the Application log, there are several informational events, but none on why it failed.
I recommend the command line version with gives a slightly better output. Open a command window with Administrator permission. Change your path to c:\windows\system32\spool\tools. Run the Printer Migration Wizard.
printbrm -s \\servername -b -f filename
Provide just a filename. Do not include any path information or the Wizard will give a mysterious “Not enough permissions”. See here and here
The wizard will now run, copying queue names, model names, driver details. If it fails with the following:
The following error occurred: 0x80070002.
The system cannot find the file specified.Check the eventlog for detailed information about the error which occurred.
Verify if the monitors and its associated DLL files exists. It is documented in detail here.
Once the backup is completed, you can restore it back into Windows 2008 with the same bit width. 32 bit to 32 bit. 32 bit to 64 bit, you will need to reinstall the drivers.
I never got to that stage.