In order to print to a local printer from a Microsoft Terminal Services or Citrix Presentation Server session, the printer must be configured in the thin client first; that is, a print queue must exist in the “Printers and Faxes” folder such that printing from applications running on the thin client works.

With that pre-requisite satisfied, there are specific considerations for Microsoft Remote Desktop and Citrix Presentation Server as follows:

When a client connects to a Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server Terminal Services session, if the local printer auto-creation is enabled (the default setting), the server will attempt to create a print queue for each of the user’s local printers. When attempting to create a printer, the system tries to find the exact same driver that is used for this printer in the client’s machine. If that driver is installed on the server as well, the print queue will be created and made available for the duration of the user’s session. If the exact same driver is not available in the server, the print queue is not created and an entry is logged in the system event log notifying the failure. This will be the case for clients using the UPD for Thin Clients driver because while based on the original UPD, it is not the same driver and won’t be seen as such by the system. To get around the need of having a multitude of different drivers installed on the server-side, it is possible to use a smaller set of print drivers and configure mappings that instruct the system to use alternate drivers for certain given client drivers.

The recommended approach under Microsoft Terminal Services is to have the original UPD (http://www.hp.com/go/upd" title="http://www.hp.com/go/upd">www.hp.com/go/upd) installed in the server. To ensure compatibility with the widest array of HP printers, it is recommended to use the PCL5 version of the UPD on the server. One exception for this recommendation is if your environment has standardized in postscript printers, in which case it might be more effective to use the postscript version of the UPD on the server.

On the Remote Desktop server machine, two registry values configure string mapping of driver’s names under Terminal Services. In order to enable driver mapping, locate the following registry key:

HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTerminal ServerWds
dpwd

Under rdpwd add the following two values:

Name: PrinterMappingINFName, Type: REG_SZ

Name: PrinterMappingINFSection, Type: REG_SZ

On PrinterMappingINFName, place the fully-qualified pathname for the INF file storing print driver mappings, such as c:windowsinfprintsubs.inf; on PrinterMappingINFSection place the name of the section of the INF file that holds the mappings, such as Printers for example.

Create the file pointed to by the above values; the contents of the file should map any desired pair of client-side driver with the corresponding driver in the server, as in the following example:

[Printers]

"HP Universal Printing for ThinClient PCL 5" = "HP Universal Printing PCL 5"

This example instructs the system to use the "HP Universal Printing PCL 5" driver on the server every time a client connects with printers using the driver "HP Universal Printing for ThinClient PCL 5" on the client side.

Notice that capitalization and whitespace are significant in the matching of the strings above; any differences from what is shown in this example would prevent the matching from being successful.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the Microsoft white paper titled “Windows 2000 Terminal Services Printer Redirection”.

Under Citrix Presentation Server versions 4.0 and 4.5 there is the option of using the Citrix UPD as the fallback driver for auto-created printers for windows clients. Under these circumstances, the recommended approach is to use the Citrix UPD in the server and UPD for Thin Clients in the clients (no configuration action is needed for this environment as the Citrix UPD is the default fallback driver). More information on printing under Citrix environments, including driver and printer selection recommendations, can be found on the white paper “HP Printers Supported in Citrix Presentation Server Environments”, found on http://www.hp.com/go/upd under the “Documentation” tab.

However, if deemed desirable to use the original UPD as the fallback driver on a Citrix Presentation Server environment, refer to appendix D of this document for the configuration instructions.