GP 10.0 on Terminal server - Default printer getting changed

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Posted on by babubaskaran@outloo...

Dear All,

We have GP 10 on Terminal server environment and all users access GP through this. For some of the users the default printer is not saving and keeps changing to some other printer and on each login they go and manually select the printer before printing from GP. Does anyone experience this please share your valuable suggestions on this.

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Ian Grieve 22,784 on at

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GP picks up the user's Windows Default Printer; if the wrong printer is being selected then I'd suggest looking at the default printers assigned to users on the terminal server.

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babubaskaran@outloo... 12 on at

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Yes Ian once the user default printer is selected its keep changing. we have 2 terminal server and using load balancing for all logins.

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Steven Vallarian 394 on at

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Hi Babu,

As a TS administrator on GP2010, I feel your pain. What we found was happening is that if there is any disruption at all in the RDP connection, the printer connection will drop, GP notices, and then it sets it to a random printer (usually a local printer on the terminal server). You can test this by disconnecting and reconnecting your NIC while connected to an RDP session.

This was terribly frustrating to our users, as I imagine yours are having the same troubles. We tried thinprint to try and work around the problem, but it didn't fix the issue since the problem is with how GP expects printers to always be there.

So what we ended up doing was installing each printer onto both terminal servers, and then using group policies to set the default printer for each user when they logged in. For example, when Linda from accounting logs in, her RDP connection is set to not redirect her local printers, and there is a login script running on just the terminal server to set her printer to a specific printer name already installed on the terminal server.

This was a bit of a pain to setup, but really reduced the number of support calls we got about printers getting set back to "default".

Another option would be to look at setting up named printers inside of GP.

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Community Member on at

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we have been having the same problem for a LONG time. we have ALL printers setup locally on the Terminal server. Many times when a user comes back from lunch or other random times, it ALWAYS switches to the Highest alphabetical printer, ie usually "Wendys HP Printer" (if that user has a higher alphabetical printer, it will take that.) If you could provide DETAILS on how you setup assigning a particular printer as default for that user at login, I would greatly appreciate it.

TIA. (I know this post is sorta old, but I hope you still have the same email address?!)

Martin

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Alvin Evans 185 on at

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Like the post above mentioned, the best solution for this would be to use named printers in GP, I found this post;

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/.../using-named-printers-with-terminal-server-revisited

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Steven Vallarian 394 on at

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So here's how I do it. There may be a better way.

create a GPO, with a user login script that points to the cmd file.

edit the .cmd for the path to the .vbs script (accounting.cmd, below)

edit the .vbs file for the printer name in printers (accounting.vbs, below)

create domain local security group

add users to default that user to it

add security group to GPO security filtering
remove Authenticated Users from GPO

The accounting.cmd file is one line that just points to the .vbs file:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

wscript \\domain.com\SysVol\domain.com\Policies\{8FAC383C-F9D4-454B-99F4-CB0F846B98AF}\User\Scripts\Logon\Accounting.vbs

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The accounting.vbs file just sets the default printer. The "Accounting" name is the *exact* name of the printer inside of the terminal server session

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Set WSHNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
WSHNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "Accounting"

------------------------------------------------------------

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