Terminal Server and Printer

[Angel Mazo]

Recently, Terminal Server was set-up by site server responsible to
give remote access to some users.

I tested it and application runs ok. Now users get Error # 2202 when
they try to "Preview"/"Print" a report because a printer is not setup.
Users confirmed that they have a printer defined.

I am not much familiar with Terminal Services protocol, I know that
everything is done at server and users only receive the screen updates
so that is fine, but my question is

how user printer(s) should be configured?

I am lost here, I would appreciate your comments.

Best regards.

Angel.

 

[Van T. Dinh]

I am not that familiar with the server side of Terminal Services either but
in the Remote Desktop Connection (available through the Menu Start /
Programs / Accessories / Communications in Windows XP), the user can click
the "Options" button which show all available options. In the "Local
Resources" tab, the user can map/connect the (default) local printer to the
Server. Once mapped, the Server will use this as the default printer for
the user.

 

[Angel Mazo]

Van,

Thanks for your answer, I am in touch with site server responsible ir
order to apply the solution to Users.
As soon as it works fine I will post a message.

Best regards.

Angel.

 

[tom]

We host our Access 2002 application on Citrix, and printing is
definitely a headache area. One solution we have when users are having
printing trouble is to utilize Access's ability to save a report in
Snapshot format onto the user's local machine. That way they can open
it locally and print it just fine. The snapshot files tend to be quite
teeny, so they transfer in a snap. Not an ideal solution, but
workable.

-TD

 

[lcs Mixmaster Remailer]

(e-mail address removed) (tom) wrote in

We host our Access 2002 application on Citrix, and printing is
definitely a headache area. One solution we have when users are having
printing trouble is to utilize Access's ability to save a report in
Snapshot format onto the user's local machine. That way they can open
it locally and print it just fine. The snapshot files tend to be quite
teeny, so they transfer in a snap. Not an ideal solution, but
workable.

-TD

citrix is just one big kludge.

 

[Van T. Dinh]

You should be able to map the default local printer so that Access (running
on the Citrix server) uses the mapped printer as the default printer for the
user.

In fact, this is done automatically by Citrix server and you have to
instruct Citrix not to map if you don't want local printer mapping. The
only requirement is that the printer driver MUST be available on the host
server.

One problem is that the mapping takes a fair bit of time if you use
non-laser printers. The problem is that most (if not all) inkjet printers
are Windows printers, i.e. relying on the host CPU to do all the printing
processing and the mapping process takes a fair bit of time, especially on a
slow link, since the host has to communicate with the printer to get all
printer settings & conditions. For a laser printers, the printer has its
own processing CPU and the host CPU does not need to know a lot of details
re the printer and therefore, the mapping is a lot quicker.

I have remote users (3000 km away) using Access via Citrix and once the
mapping is done, users can print without any problems.

 

[tom]

A benefit of saving snapshots & printing them locally is that when
printing directly from Citrix, the printer spool file is sent over the
wire to the local machine. We've found these to be quite large in the
case of reports that are 100 pages or more, and one blip can kill the
print job. In contrast, snapshot files, even for large reports, are
quite small, and once on the user's machine they can easily be
printed.

We are now experimenting with using Citrix's Content Redirection to
automatically launch the saved local snapshot in the user's own
browser, making this all reasonably transparent.

-TD