Win2k/XP Terminal Services Automatic Printer Redirection

[cinolas]

I have Terminal Services running on our Win2k Server box. One of our computer running WinXP (Home Edition I believe)connects to TS without a problem but the automatic printer redirection (of a USB HP DeskJet 750) is just not happening. In MS's Win2k documentation docs I found the following statement :

"For 32-bit Windows 2000 Terminal Services clients, printer redirection is automatic when the local printer uses a driver that is installed on the Windows 2000 server."

What about for 32-bit Windows XP Terminal Service clients ?

The TS client is not part of the network... So I cannot find the printer in Active Directory or map it using NET USE.

How can I install the win2k drivers if I can't point to the printer ?
How can I install the XP drivers on a win2k server ? specially without seing it on the network !

In Terminal Service Configuration/RDP-TCP Propeties/Client Settings/Connection:

- the option "Use connection settings from user settings" is unchecked
- the option "Connect client printer at logon" is checked
- the option "Default to main client printer" is checked
- the option "Disable the following : Windows printer mapping" is unchecked.
- It shouldn't matter but in the XP TS client's settings, the option of connecting client printer at logon is also checked.

We tried a lot of different things without success so I just decided to start over. I removed all HP DeskJet 750 drivers from the win2k TS server.

Can someone please give or point to straightforward intructions on how to get the local printer to redirect ?

 

[cinolas]

More questions...

Does the printer needs to be shared on the client ?

 

[XavierNetMan]

I have also had this problem with W2K TS. Have you done a registry change in c:\winnt\inf\ntprint.inf. If the w2k driver is not found in the .inf file you will need to redirect the location of the driver

 

[cinolas]

I have read about this procedure but I think it's a workaround if the printer driver names don't match exactly. So I haven't tried that yet... i'm still trying to install the driver... then if the names don't match I'll have to try that. Thanks

 

[cinolas]

Update !

Well... it turns out that the printer was actually a HP PSC 750 and not a deskjet... AND according to HP this printer (an many others) are simply not network compatible and therfore will not work in TS. I found an article on the HP website that specifies TS installation intruction for the DeskJet 895, 970 and 990 only... I don't know if I should assume that these printers are the only low end HP printers that are TS compatible. Probably not since we have a DeskJet 960 and it works fine in TS ! But the people at HP sure don't seem to know about this ! They had a really hard time answering my questions...

So I will try again with a different printer and I'll come back to this forum if I have problems (or solutions !)

One question remains (for curiosity's sake):

According to Microsoft, automatic printer redirection will not work if the printer driver's name don't match.

In the case of a XP client to Win2k TS server; I install the XP driver on the XP box and win2k drivers on the server ? Or am I suppose to install the XP driver on the Win2k TS server ?

If I install different drivers on the client and the server (XP drivers on XP client and Win2k drivers on Win2k server) the driver names probably won't match. Is it correct to assume that I will have to go ahead with the ntprint.inf and registry procedure as mentioned by XavierNetMan ? Is it correct to assume that this procedure is necessary in all cases when the TS client and TS server use different OS ?

Thanks to all.