Installing non-native printer drivers 1

[acl03]

We are using windows 2000 server with citrix metaframe XP. I wanted to install some newer printers on the terminal server to make available to clients, but i have heard there are problems installing drivers that are not included with windows on a terminal server.

Has anyone dealt with this, and is there a fix?



Thanks,
Andrew

 

[enigma99]

acl03,
You CAN install "non-native" 2k print drivers on your Citrix servers but recommendations from Citrix and Microsoft is that you only have native print drivers.

I had to fight this battle plenty of time and you will pretty much always have to install some sort of 3rd party print driver on your server. By "3rd party" I mean HP, Ricoh, Cannon..etc..etc..
There are also applications that will help with printing solutions (ie...thinprint, uniprint and net2printer.)

What I've found to be the best solution is to always map the client printer to a native 2k print driver. You can do this by using the Citrix wtsprnt.inf file.

Within this file you can specify the client print driver and point it to a already installed native 2k print driver.

Example:
client driver Server driver
HP LaserJet 4050n HP LaserJet 4000PCL

That way the client 4050N will use the Server 4000 PCL driver. You wouldn't have to install the 4050n driver on the server.
Also, make sure that you input the client print driver exactly as it shows on the client side. If not it will not work.

Hope that helps.

 

[acl03]

Will mapping to different drivers cause you to lose some functionality of your newer printers (duplexing, tray settings, etc)?



Thanks,
Andrew

 

[sturm26]

Depends on the age of your printers. You do lose some functionality if you use Win Native LJ4000 drivers for a LJ 4300. It should still print, you just don't get all the goodies.

 

[acl03]

What's the best 3rd party app that takes care of this?



Thanks,
Andrew

 

[enigma99]

acl03,
That is a correct statement.
You might lose some functionality if you map 2 totally different printers.

You might also get some weird formats if they are not compatible.

The best thing to do is to always have a testing phase before putting into production.
Get some power users and have them print out with different settings and formats.

Again....unfortunately sometimes you do have to install the third party drivers on the Citrix servers.
Some print manufacturers have "Citrix" or "Terminal Server" friendly print drivers.

But again...do the testing before placing into production.

 

[enigma99]

I've heard pretty good things about thinprint but never used it.
I always just mapped the drivers to native drivers.
We also solved some of our printing issues by upgrading to the new version of Citrix.

The Universal Print Drivers that Citrix installs are pretty good. If the native 2k or 2k3 driver is not available on the server, it will use this for its print driver. So that means you will not have to install a 3rd party driver.

Let us know if you use a 3rd party solution. I want to see how they work and if there is a lot of management overhead on them.

thanks!