Printing problems

[HomerJ]

Hi.

Here a big problem again. since we use citrix we have problems with printer drivers.
we use w2k servers with mf xpe fr1. in our network there is a win2k print server with installed hp printer drivers for win2k and win nt 4.0
this combination drivers are the problem.
when a user logs into the domain, the printers are connected with a login script. so the combination drivers for win2k and win nt 4 are connected to the citrix servers. this drivers makes problems. we have one server on which are only win2k drivers installed and this server is really stable. the other servers crashes down sometimes with bsod.
i am sure this combination drivers cause this problems.

has anyone an idea how we can install only win2k drivers on our mf servers ? how is it possible to stop the automatic installation of client printer drivers ?

thanks for any help

 

[ahalecitrix]

HomerJ,

The key is to get all the Win2k drivers installed on the servers. Then the Citrix servers will only use the correct Win2k drivers. And I would suspect that the NT 4.0 drivers are causing some issues.

I believe the installed printer drivers are located here in the registry:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT x86\Drivers\Version-3
Any NT 4.0 drivers will be listed as Kernel mode drivers. Remove those drivers and reinstall the equivalent Win2k driver. You may also want to search Citrix site for the current list of approved drivers for Windows 2000 Terminal Services. I believe CitrixEngineer recently posted a link to the list in this forum.

I hope that helps!

 

[BeerGood]

Also, to stop the auto install of printer drivers, you should be able to fire up the management console then right click on "Printer Management" in your farm and change the settings to how you prefer..... (ie don't auto create the printers, or alternatively do auto create but just use the universal printer driver - assuming you don't mind not printing in colour or higher resolutions)

Cheers

 

[HomerJ]

thanks for your replies.

but we need this drivers urgently because we have over 100 pc's with win nt 4.0 installed on it.

is the only possibility to install all workstations to win2k so we can use clear win2k printer drivers ? not really, or ?

 

[BeerGood]

Upgrading all the workstations from NT4 sounds like a drastic/expensive step just to enable printing, although I'm sure I could think of a number of other reasons why you might want to do it.

Anyhow, the options (other than an upgrade) appear to be to either (carefully) manually install all the correct NT4 and win2k drivers onto the Citrix server and prevent the clients from auto-installing OR to use the universal printer driver. Personally, I'd try the universal driver as that requires no print drivers to be installed on the citrix server itself. As previously noted, however, you do lose some functionality but maybe that's not important for your situation?

Cheers