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Printing Issue

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AndyE45

MIS
Jul 24, 2003
183
CA
Environment:
PS4, RO2 on Win2k3 servers (x32). Latest MS patches always applied.

Users have session printers assigned by policy, no local printers are mapped.

Problem:
I have a user whose default printer (Lexmark E332n PS3) frequently becomes unavailable. I can see it in the print dialogue box of any published app but when it's hightlighted the "Print" button is greyed out. I figured out that the driver for the printer needed to be re-written to the servers affected. The problem is that it keeps happening. The user will be connected to a server using an app like Outlook and everything will be fine for several days then it fails again. There is no pattern or rhyme or reason that I can see, it could happen on any of the 7 servers we have that are serving up the apps this user needs. No other users that I know of are experiencing this issue even though some have the same model of printer.

It just so happens that another user is having printer/driver issues too but with a different model of printer (lexmark T640) though that may be a problem with the drivers not replicating properly among servers. One thing I noticed was that both are in the auto replication list though only the first one is set to overwrite - I wouldn't expect this to have any bearing on this since they are different models but you never know. I have just removed both from the list to see if that helps but I can't say I'm hopeful.

I've tried manually replicating the drivers from servers known to be working and it seems to work for a while but then will fail again eventually, even on the servers that were originally known to be working.

I've also tried deleting the user's profile and letting a new one be created. Nothing seems to help.

Has anybody else seen anything like this?
 
With PS4 you should really be using the universal print driver instead of using actual printer specific drivers. Switching to the Universal driver should clear up your issues.
 
jfp23,

Thanks for your reply.

There are times when I've considered only using the UPD but that's not really possible for us. We have a number of different apps and environments with specialized set ups.

We think we found our issue anyway. It seems there occasions when the PCL and PS3 drivers are unstable. We switched both printers to the PS driver and they've both been stable for a couple of days now.
 
Also historically Lexmark and Citrix are never a good match.

[blue] A perspective from the other side!![/blue]

Cheers
Scott
 
ascotta,

There may be some truth to that. We've had problems with Sharp too. HP seems to give us the least trouble.
 
If I remember correctly I have only played with one sharp, and it was OK. HP pretty much work, one way or another.

[blue] A perspective from the other side!![/blue]

Cheers
Scott
 
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