Printers slow to auto create or not creating at all

[joedig]

We seem to have an issue with printers not auto creating, the clients were informing us that there printers were not in the list of the available printers or that there default printer was not correct.

The following actions were taken:
Logged the users into a desktop session and added the required printer manually. The client was then able to print, often without reconnection to the open program.
Updated the printer drivers from the print server.
Created a scrip to load the clients default printer and load it into their profile on the server.

It was at this point the following was noted:

When opening a desktop session and going to printers window it is taking several minutes to map all of the printers, they can be seen adding one by one over quite a time period, often the printers do not map at all. So the user is left with the Microsoft image writer only.

Having looked through the forums, have found no information regarding this type of issue although some are similar.


Our environment is Windows Server 2003 SP1 with most security hot fixes, Citrix PSE 4.0 and PSE400W2K3R02 with client version 10.1 I have downloaded and tested the latest client version but still have the same issue. The printer policies have had seemingly every option tested without resolution. We use the manufacture print drivers in most instances. Three of these have been updated with Vista drivers but this has still not resolved the issue.



If anyone has any insight to this problem, could you please offer some assistance?

 

[PU36]

Does it happen to select users or to users randomly? Does it happen during a busy part of the day or slow? Is there any pattern to it at all?

 

[joedig]

Hi,

It happens to 85% of users throughout the day, those that don’t suffer one day can suffer the next. On most occasions when they login to a published app they have no printers, a desktop session is opened on their machine to the server they are logged onto and the printer is manually added, 9/10 times they can then print, on the odd occasion they have to log off the published app and back in again, they can then print for the remainder of the day but the next day the cycle starts again.

Desktop sessions have been opened with test users and found to take over two minutes to propagate the printers. They can be seen appearing one by one.

Hope this of assistance.


Joseph

 

[ukkcbeard]

Do these users connect over a WAN or a LAN to get onto Citrix?

 

[ukkcbeard]

Also, what printing polices do you have in place on the farm?

 

[joedig]

They connect over a LAN, we have tried different settings but this has still not helped, we have even removed all polices. but the probelm still remains.

 

[KaronW]

More questions for you-
1. Are these locally connected printers?
2. If you are using a printerserver, what is the o/s?
I ran into similar problems, but after moving printers to a server with the same o/s as the presentation servers, it has cleared up most of my issues.

 

[ukkcbeard]

Can I ask why your users on the LAN are using client cliented printers and not network printers via a print server?

Also, what driver setup do you have? Native drivers? or the universal print driver (UPD)?

 

[joedig]

Hi,
All of our printers run through a print server running W2K3 SP1, all our servers are on the same version. The system is set to use the native drivers first and then the UPD if the native are unavailable.
After the trouble started we have a Citrix logon script to map the default printer on at the point the user’s login.
The initial findings were that the session was taking an age to load the session printers so it was picking up any printer on site and then assigning that as the default printer as it was loaded first. Then the users began to have no printers at all.
The Printer Polices we have currently got in place currently (Which have slowed the amount of incidents but has not resolved the issue)

Client printers:
Auto Creation – Auto Create all client printers

Drivers:
Native printer driver auto install – Install native drivers as needed
Universal driver – Use universal driver only if requested driver is unavailable.

Session printers: Set default printer to clients main printer

Hope this helps

Joseph

 

[ukkcbeard]

Thanks Joesph,

First and foremost i would remove the policy that allows for Native drivers to be installed as needed...you are essentially giving the ability to install whatever driver the session thinks it needs...whilst that might seem good...it is not as you lose an element of control over your Citrix print drivers. Given this is prob one of the biggest bug bears in Citrix I would set this not to install the drivers automatically. You should make sure that your Citrix boxes only carry the drivers for the printers you support (And are supported by Citrix). Unsupported drivers can do funny things to the lcoal print spooler causing the sort of problems you are seeing.

Do you support users working from home? or from locations other than your lcoal LAN? If not I would switch off the creation of client printers and use the printing policies to map Session printers only. You can set a policy per department if you require different setups for different departments.
(Failing that you can set up the printers using CON2PRT in your login script...its a bit of a pain but I have found it always gets the job done assuming the drivers are correct.)

 

[ukkcbeard]

Sorry, one more thing...have you tried updating the client? early versions of client v10 did have several issues with printing. Version 11 is the lastest one out, might be worth a go.