Printers disappearing in Terminal Server

[astaylor]

We are running Windows Server 2003 and all users connect to a terminal server farm to do their work. We currently redirect all users local printers to the rdp session and that works great. The problem i am having is that a couple times a day a user will call complaining that their printers in the rdp session have disappeared. Logging out and logging back in fixes the issue. What i am looking for is a way to solve this problem without logging out and back on as the users are often doing work that doesnt easily allow for them to log off and back on. Is there any sort of a way to simulate a logon where the printers are reconnected by way of a bat file or vbscript that any of you know of. It would be real easy for me to just tell the user, go to start->accessories->reconnect printers.bat or something of that nature.

thanks,


-drew

 

[astaylor]

bump...

any ideas? even third party software?

-drew

 

[compuveg]

Well, you shouldn't have to log off. Can they just disconnect and reconnect? When you reconnect the printers should be rebuilt. It is still a pain. I've done such to be able to print to a printer that didn't exist when I first logged in remotely.

I would doublecheck that the user is consistently using the same RDP icon, and that the icon has the option selected to connect printers.

 

[astaylor]

i will try that. they all do only have one rdp icon and the printers all redirect just fine and the problem, for whatever reason, is that the printers do connect successfully at first logon, but ever now and then they will just disappear and it gets to be a pain logging off and on just for that. i have seen scripts that can rerun the printer portion of logon without going through the process of logging off and back on but i cant find anything about it anywhere. hoping someone here would be able to point me in the right direction.

thanks,

-drew

 

[bracadar]

I'm sure you checked, but could it be the printer or the drivers that client is using? Have you tried updating drivers?

 

[astaylor]

thanks for your response bracadar. it almost seems like it happens to users at random and with different printers so i dont think since almost all of the time they can print successfully that a driver would be the issue.

-drew

 

[compuveg]

Another thought crossed my mind. How often does the server reboot?

I've got a server in our DMZ that I use RDP to manage. Suddenly in 'My Computer', all of the 'C on ClientPC' drives show up as blank icons, with no text after them. They are totally inaccessible. This only occurred this past week.

Interestingly enough, I can still type into the Window's Explorere address bar '\\tsclient\c' and get my C Drive.

I believe this to just be something askew in the server's active memory, and that it will clear up on a reboot. I'll post back when I get to check it. I expect that to be in about a week. it is a shame microsoft has determined that Terminal Services shouldn't be able to be stopped and started like a real service.

 

[astaylor]

i am thinking along the same line that it has something to do with memory as well. i reboot all the terminal servers once a week routinely and that helps with a number of problems. terminal server is definitely not the best software to work with but when its what you have in place theres really not much i can do but try to make my job a little easier. thanks for your quick reply's. if you can think of anything else let me know.

thanks,

-drew

 

[bracadar]

I found this link. Take a look and see if it applies:

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t61675.html

 

[astaylor]

good info bracadar. that poster had just about the same problem i had. the main thing they came up with though was to use PS drivers instead of PCL drivers, which i will give that a shot, but there are some printers that we have to use the pcl drivers with so it wouldnt fully solve the problem.

-drew