Enabling Client Printer Support for Terminal Services remote clients for Windows 2003 Server |
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Enabling Client Printer Support for Terminal Services remote clients
1. Install the printer drivers on your Terminal Servers.
a. When a user connects to a Terminal Server, his local RDP client software automatically makes the printers he has installed locally available to him from within his server session. It does this by dynamically creating printers that print to special printer ports (also dynamically created) that point back to the client device. These printers will have a name like " Printer name (from Client name)in Session # ." (For example, "Lexmark Optra E312 (from LAPTOP42) in session 14.") Furthermore, these printers are configured on special ports with names like "TS001" and "TS002" (as seen from the "Ports" tab of the printer's property page. Each printer is created with permissions that allow only that user to print to it.
b. If Terminal Server does not include the driver for your printer, you will have to install that driver locally on the server.
Some drivers can be problematic if they are going through the vendor supplied installation script which may want to install applications and tools in addition to the driver They will also attempt to create a printer object with standard ports. The printer object is not required for client printing under Terminal Services. Only the driver is required.
You can work around troublesome driver installations if you can extract the files from the installation source.
- Open the Printers and Faxes applet
- Select the Drivers tab
- Select the Add button
- Find the INF file for the driver you wish to install.
The driver will now be available on the server. When the remote user connects, the printer will dynamically be created and available for use.
2. Configure your servers to use client printers.
a. Verify Terminal Server Permissions for Printing
In order for users to be able to print on a Terminal Server, users will need Read, Write, Execute, and List Folder Contents access to the print spooler's directory, %SystemRoot%\System32\Spool .
NOTE: These are not the default settings for Windows Server 2003, though these settings are typically a Terminal Services best practice.
b. Verify RDP Listener Configuration for Client Printer Use
With the Terminal Services Configuration tool, you can configure the client printer options for all users that use a particular connection. In the "client settings" tab section of the connection properties, make sure that the "Windows printer mapping" and " LPT port mapping" boxes are not checked in the "Disable the following" section. Checking either one of these boxes will prevent client printers from being mapped.
If the "Use connection settings from user settings" option is checked, then you will need to verify that the user's account is properly configured for client printer mapping.
c. Configure User Account Settings
Within the user account properies, select the Environment tab. Ensure the appropriate options are checked. These are usually enabled by default. They include "Connect client printers at logon" and "Default to main client printer".
3. Verify client's RDP client configuration.
In the RDP client, select Options -> Local Resources. Check that printers are selected for use in remote sessions. |
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