J
JohnB
Guest
I had posted something earlier on printing problems and realized that I'm
probably going about asking for help here in the wrong way.
I'll explain the situation first;
I am working a temporary assignment at a company that has about 30 to 40 TS
users. They each have their own printer. All clients are XP or Vista, most
are XP. The server is 2003 SP2 R2. One of my goals here is to help with
their printing problems.
All printers are inexpensive personal printers. Most are HP Laserjets;
1006, 1010, 1012, 1015, 1018, 1020, 1022 and 1055. With a few Oki, Brother
and HP inkjet printers mixed in. No business class network printers
(unfortunately). They are learning the hard way that it doesn't pay to "go
cheap", they have massive printing problems. 90% of all calls are for
printing problems from their RDP session.
I took a look at an HP document that lists which HP printers are supported
and which aren't.
As I said, the majority of their IT problems are printer/RDP related and,
with almost all of those the issue is; in their RDP session they loose their
local/default printer. They somehow have other printers in their RDP
session, other user's local printer, and so they invariably send output to
someone else's printer when this happens.
What I have found is, if they logout of their RDP session and log back in,
they get their printer back. Sometimes that *doesn't* work. And so I've
also found that if I stop and stop the server spooler while they're logged
out, they get their printer when they log back in.
I had read here suggestions to try a third-party printing solution. I have
a colleague that uses ThinPrint where she works. She did not set it up, it
was there when she started. And without me describing our issues first, she
said "one of the problems they have is, the printer disappears from the RDP
session". So I'm leery of suggesting to management this as a solution,
based on that.
One of the replies/suggestions I got from a previous post suggested using
the Fallback driver or use this page -
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=239088 - to edit the registry. I read a
couple articles on the web about the Fallback driver and didn't get a warm &
fuzzy feeling about that being a good solution to this issue. And the
Microsoft page referred to making changes to the registry on the 2003
server, something I would only do as a last resort.
From all the research I've done, everything points to this being an issue
with incompatible printers. Printers that aren't supported by TS. But, I
used the HP document and created a checklist of which HP printers that are
supported and which aren't (at this company). And what I have found is;
both supported and non-supported HP printers have the problem where they
*disappear* from the RDP session. The same problem that also happens with
ThinPrint.
So I am *hoping* to find someone that has been down this same road. And
that they have found a solution that works reliably and consistently.
TIA
probably going about asking for help here in the wrong way.
I'll explain the situation first;
I am working a temporary assignment at a company that has about 30 to 40 TS
users. They each have their own printer. All clients are XP or Vista, most
are XP. The server is 2003 SP2 R2. One of my goals here is to help with
their printing problems.
All printers are inexpensive personal printers. Most are HP Laserjets;
1006, 1010, 1012, 1015, 1018, 1020, 1022 and 1055. With a few Oki, Brother
and HP inkjet printers mixed in. No business class network printers
(unfortunately). They are learning the hard way that it doesn't pay to "go
cheap", they have massive printing problems. 90% of all calls are for
printing problems from their RDP session.
I took a look at an HP document that lists which HP printers are supported
and which aren't.
As I said, the majority of their IT problems are printer/RDP related and,
with almost all of those the issue is; in their RDP session they loose their
local/default printer. They somehow have other printers in their RDP
session, other user's local printer, and so they invariably send output to
someone else's printer when this happens.
What I have found is, if they logout of their RDP session and log back in,
they get their printer back. Sometimes that *doesn't* work. And so I've
also found that if I stop and stop the server spooler while they're logged
out, they get their printer when they log back in.
I had read here suggestions to try a third-party printing solution. I have
a colleague that uses ThinPrint where she works. She did not set it up, it
was there when she started. And without me describing our issues first, she
said "one of the problems they have is, the printer disappears from the RDP
session". So I'm leery of suggesting to management this as a solution,
based on that.
One of the replies/suggestions I got from a previous post suggested using
the Fallback driver or use this page -
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=239088 - to edit the registry. I read a
couple articles on the web about the Fallback driver and didn't get a warm &
fuzzy feeling about that being a good solution to this issue. And the
Microsoft page referred to making changes to the registry on the 2003
server, something I would only do as a last resort.
From all the research I've done, everything points to this being an issue
with incompatible printers. Printers that aren't supported by TS. But, I
used the HP document and created a checklist of which HP printers that are
supported and which aren't (at this company). And what I have found is;
both supported and non-supported HP printers have the problem where they
*disappear* from the RDP session. The same problem that also happens with
ThinPrint.
So I am *hoping* to find someone that has been down this same road. And
that they have found a solution that works reliably and consistently.
TIA