Printer issues on terminal server

[lsheldon]

We have Windows 2003 R2 terminal servers apx.30 for our ultra thin client network.

 

The problem is when the user selects a printer it does not allow them to print, unless a administrator origanaly selects the printer on there login

The administrator can then delete the printer and the user can still addd the printer themselfs.

 

Its like something is not letting the user install possibly the printer drivers.

 

Does anybody have any ideas.

[lsheldon]

I wondered if thee is anything i should be setting in gpo ?

[localzuk]

Not sure about how to get around it in an automated manner, but I have installed all available printers as administrator, so when a user comes along, they can install/uninstall freely.

[lsheldon]

I could i just dont want to do this on 30 servers

[lsheldon]

One of the message is: You do not have sufficent access to your computer to connect the selected printer.

[Ric_]

Just run a script to install all the printers and then delete them again. This is easiest done using a startup script. The page at http://www.edugeek.net/wiki/index.php/Printer_Addition_Based_on_Location shows how to add and delete printers.

[User3204]

We have always found that we need to be an adamin level user to install the drivers for the printers, although I always suspected that this is due to a GPO that was on the system/network.

 

We found the solution was to install the drivers for all the printers onto all the machines in advance, since we build the machines and then image them, this means we only have to do it once per new image.

[Ric_]

Since you have 30 terminal servers, I would hope that you would have something to manage them. Citrix XenApp has a feature that replicates printer drivers across all the servers in the farm. This is something else to look into.

[e-class]

The problem you are facing is because unlike workstations, Terminal Servers (or Citrix Servers) do NOT allow users to download printer drivers, which if you think about it makes sense.

 

Generally, on a workstation a user can download drivers as this will only affect just that workstation and only the users that use that workstation. On a Terminal/Citrix server you have multiple users using that same server, therefore if you do download a 'dodgy' print driver, it will affect a whole load of users - not good. There used to be a time, quite a while ago, when servers would frequently blue screen if you added the 'wrong driver'.

 

As mentioned previously, you could do the following:

1)... Allow users to download drivers, via a policy.

2)... Install all the necessary drivers, as an admin on that server, probably best to do this at build time.

3)... If they are Citrix servers then replicate them around using the Console, or use the Universal Print Driver.

4)... If they are simple Windows Terminal Servers, then you'll have to manually go to each and add the driver, or as an admin, simply connect to the printer, which should add the drivers. Alternatively, you could try and script it, if you have loads of printers, but this will mean copying files and exporting/importing registry keys.

 

You might also be able to use 'printmig' which might do the trick of getting the drivers across to all servers?

 

HTH

Edited March 8, 2009 by e-class