Connect clients default printer ONLY?

[HisNameWasRobertPaulson]

Hello, does anyone know of a way to get Terminal Services to connect a
clients Default printer ONLY??
We have several clients connecting and most of them have 5 - 10
printers installed when they connect. This is a drain on server
resources.

All I want to do is to connect the clients default printer ONLY.
Does anyone know of an easy, inexpensive server-side solution?
Thanks,

-Mike

 

[Mattgew Harris [MVP]]

Hmm...By default, and as far as I know the only way, is
that all client printers as mapped.

Citrix allows you to do this, but buying a huge piece of
software just to do such a simple job probably isn't worth
it.

-M

 

[HisNameWasRobertPaulson]

You are correct. The is also a third party app that will do it too
(tricerat.com - screwdrivers) but it is $1500 per server... not an
option.
Does anyone know of another app or script, perhaps??

Thanks,

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

I could probably write a script to disconnect printers
that are't the default, but this by far wouldn't be
optimal. My only thought is that you either create a hook
to intercept the printer calls from terminal services, or
you manually turn off client printer mapping and then just
run a script to manually map the first printer...

-M

 

[HisNameWasRobertPaulson]

I know it is possible to write a script to disconnect any printer
except the default, but you are right - this is NOT optimal.
My objective is to not connect those printers in the first place.

You mentioned connecting a printer via a script... how would you go
about doing this??

Thanks for your input!

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Assuming you want to only connect to the default printer
and not disconnect all the other printers, I'm willing to
bet your could automate what this article talks about...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;243552&Product=win2000

The unfortunate thing is that you wouldn't know what type
of printer the client was using, and therefore you
wouldn't know what type of driver to use for the printer
at port TS001. Hmm...it might just be easier to connect
all the printers and delete everything but the non-default
one...

....in that case, you could just query the default
printer's name, and delete every other printer who's name
does not equal the default printer's name. Is this sound
like something you are interested in? I might be able to
come up with a script to do it...

-M

 

[HisNameWasRobertPaulson]

This is a good point, however connecting all the printers from the
start is what I am trying to avoid. So simply disconnecting all but
the default is not an option. There must be some way to accomplish
what we need.
I would be more than happy to compensate your efforts if this could be
achieved.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

I know that Citrix can do this...so there obviously must
be a way to do this through normal terminal services.
However, I'm a little stumped as far as the best way to go
about this. I'm going to look around a little bit and if
I find anything, I'll post it here.

Just had a thought...and you might want to try this on the
off chance this it will work. You might be able to print
directly to the port, much in the same way you could print
directly to the lpt port. I'm going to test this out,
although I'm a little skeptical.

-M

-----Original Message-----
This is a good point, however connecting all the printers from the
start is what I am trying to avoid. So simply disconnecting all but
the default is not an option. There must be some way to accomplish
what we need.
I would be more than happy to compensate your efforts if this could be
achieved.

"Matthew Harris [MVP]" <[email protected]> wrote

in message [email protected]>...