Proper printer install

[timscronin]

We have a Citrix 1.8 install on W2000. All current clients are Win 2000 PRO. The print server is also on the Citrix box(not my idea!). The printers on the network are a mix of HP's connected to throught Jet Direct cards, while some others are shared off the pack of parallel ports on certain PC's. For the best results, should all standard printers be added to the client and let autocreate. One NT person here thinks just adding the printers to Citrix is the solution. I thought for all standard Windows printers this was the wrong way. And if you did have a non-windows standard printer you should use their utility to add the printer so it would map and auto create correctly for the user. Any input experience appreciated.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

For local printers, I've always found that the autocreate feature works fine. Just make sure that the appropriate driver is installed on the Citrix server, and aliases entered into the wtsuprn.inf file, where necessary - eg if the description given to the client differs from that given to the server. If the printer is "non-standard", you may have a bit of praying to do, but you may be able to get it working by using a "generic" driver for that printer manufacturer.

For Network printers, the only reliable way of making sure that the user has the correct printer is to map it as you say. There is no way that any software can detect which is the most appropriate network printer for a given user, except a custom batch file.

There are utilities, such as Uniprint, which are expensive, but I've never been 100% convinced by them.

I hope this helps